Fear in the Night
INCREASINGLY mystery and horror take the place of true detection, and this month it is the former category-that stands at the- top of the tree with, as usual, the Americans leading. Reclining Figure by Marco Page (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 9s. 6d.), a writer new to me, is original and exciting, and based, as the best of these books tend to be, on specialised expertise. Ellis Blaise, a young New York art-dealer, has sold a lot of pictures to the typical grudge-filled eccentric millionaire, Edgerton, who keeps them in his Californian mansion. Edgerton has, as is essential, a weakling son and a beautiful niece, but what he principally has is Renoir drawings that can be as well faked as stolen, and Blaise's perambulations among the family, the pictures, and the questionable local art-dealers, girl- friends and crooks, make up a very good piece of informative entertainment.
Do Evil in Return by Margaret Millar (Museum Press. 10s. 6d.) is more of the psychological thriller that American women writers can be so good at, and this one is a lot better than the run-of-the- mill Had-l-But-Knowns. Dr. Charlotte Keating has a good practice and a married lover. Led by pity to extend the former into dark slums and on into cheap dangerous "motels" in Oregon, she finds her- self embroiled not only in personal peril but in a tangle of relation- ship between her lover, his wife, and the brash but nice policeman who wants to save her from evil not only abroad- but at home. To compare Miss Millar, as the blurb does, to Elizabeth Bowen is so much hooey, but leaving hyperbole aside, she has much to offer in the way of intelligent tense thrill.
With Death in Ambush by Susan Gilruth (Hale. 9s. 6d.), we are back at simple English detection of an honest and agreeable kind. The narrator, Liane Crauford, who goes to stay with the local doctor in the village where Sir Henry Metcalfe gets murdered, is a nice creature with sufficient character and a good enough style to keep us interested to the end, even though, alas, we couldn't help but guess the mechanism of the alibi long before we were supposed to.
The Bermuda Murder Case by Leslie Ford (Crime Club. 9s. 6d.) is much more sophisticated if less serious-minded about its detection. Betsey, a charming American girl, visits her fiancé's family on the island, and both the drunken uncle and Mrs. Huse-Lorne next door behave very oddly indeed ; a slick and competent job of its kind. Arthur Upficld works very hard with his Australian half-caste detective, Napoleon Bonaparte, and in The New Shoe (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.) with Boney disguised as a summer visitor, trying to fmd out all about the body in the lighthouse, he. has a lot of plot as well as much homespun wisdom ; the trouble is that Mr. Upfield rates his hero more highly than he is capable of making him appear.
There are two collections this month, both well worth a place on
the week-end shelf. One is an Ellery Queen compilation called The Literature of Crime (Cassell. I 5i.), which includes such varied authors as De Maupassant, C. S. Forester, Margery Sharp and Walter de la Mare. The-other is called Mystery, and subtitled " An Anthology of the Mysterious in Fact and Fiction " (Hulton. 12s. 6d.) ; it offers a high standard of story-telling and report-
ing as well as funny cartoons and attractive decorations. .
ESTHER HOWARD.
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