25 JANUARY 1957, Page 23

The Case of the Fiery Fingers. By Erle Stanley Gardner.

(Heinemann, 12s. 6d.) Paul Drake is as highly ingenious and as tireless as ever in his detection, and Perry Mason as infuriating to the New York Police Department and District Attorney, and as persuasive to a jury, in this latest streamlined piece of consumer goods to come from the Erie Stanley Gardner assembly line. Which reminds me to condemn the concealed microphone as not only a threat to civil liberties but as being as fatal to a clean-run detective story as sliding panels, remarkable resemblances and