29 JUNE 1956, Page 22

THE SLEEPING PARTNER. By Winston Graham. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s.

6d.) Here, too, death doesn't strike until the middle of the book, but by that time the charicters, and their possible motives for the crime that's going to happen, have been readably established, and so has the sort of Balchinesque modern factory. A readably matter-of-fact piece about people no more naturally violent than ourselves who are caught up, nevertheless, in murder.