MAKE IT SNAPPY

6c1.)

ALL are agreed that the detective story is in a dilemma: Almost every possible plot and murder-method is exhatisted, the old, leisurely gun-and-fingerprint problem will no longer do (no one has left a fingerprint in a detective story for years, except occasionally a faked One). Whence cometh help ? On the one hand stands the mighty Miss Sayers (whom God preserve) and her latest novels " not without detective interest " ; on the other, the snappy, quick-fire school of Dashiel Hammett. In one of these directions the craft will probably develop, and the second is surely preferable. The trouble about Miss Sayers' method is that nowadays it takes Miss Sayers to carry it off. True, there are one or two other writers, such as -Mr. Nicholas Blake, Mr. Michael sInnes and Miss Margery Allingham, who handle a similar medium very nicely, while on a psychological by-road Mr. Francis Iles stands alone. But, with a few such exceptions, detection writers would be well advised to cut out the elaborate (and usually vain) attempts at character-drawing, the forcibly introduced love interest, the " background," the padding and the repetitions, and make it snappy.

I'll be Judge, I'll be Jury deserves to head the list, although not a true detective story, because of Mr. Kennedy's successful determination to experiment. In Sic Transit Gloria he made

- good --beginning; and the - present -bOok 'marks' 'a - definite advance. -._It is-a--grim-little -study -in the Iles -manner, terse, economical and exciting. Like the two Iles books it has a

Eme opening :

" He heard the sound of someone =walking on the rough shingle ; Since he heard it above-the sound of- the sea, the walker must be close at hand. He heard_a-gentle; cooing whistle.

He left the body huddled on the floor. . . . "

' There is also a fine macabre twist in the tail.

Beginning with a Bash is certainly snappy enough, and amusing too. It begins, as you may guess, with a bash, and ends with a series of bangs. In between 'one learns 'what can happen in twenty-four hours in quiet, highbrow Bost.

Or can it ?

Dames Don't Care is the third volume of the adventures of Lemuel H. Caution, ace G-man and tough guy. The scene is laid in Mexico and the Californian desert, " where men are men an' women are durn glad of it." The story is told in the first person in breakneck American slang, and you have to read it all. Lemmy Caution is so tough he'd make the postman ring three times.

And now for the traditionalists. Hamlet, Revenge ! is a first-rate piece of work, intelligent, well written, elaborate and exciting. Rather a lot of talk, perhaps, but mostly good talk. Highly recommended. So, too, is Careless Corpse

which, if perhaps not quite such good value as Mr. Daly King's last book, Obelists Fly High, is nevertheless a good example Of this author's subtlety and skill in creating suspense. The proportion of psychologists in the dramatis personae is, thank

goodness, lower than before, but we are treated instead to the Chinese theory of vibrations, and the author's views on music. Logicians are more likely than chemists to guess the identity and methods of the murderer.

Dumb Witness is a fair-to-medium Christie. The assump- tions of Poirot seem more unwarranted than usual, but Mrs. Christie is mercifully sparing of incidental chatter, and gets On briskly with the murder in hand. Her disregard-of detail, which spoiled earlier books (cf. The A.B.C. Murders), does no great harm here, though the flowers in the murderee's garden do seem to bloom in a curious order.

Death Framed in Silver is a trifle long-winded, and the plot is more than usually preposterous, but it makes exciting enough reading, and Miss Campbell follows the good old tradition of concluding each chapter with a bash or a bang.

The meaning of the title is not the least of the book's many mysteries.

These Names Make Clues, on the other hand, lives laboriously up to its title. Almost everyone's name is an anagram of s pmething else, and they all turn out to have been born in the same small country village—another hamlet 'revenge. The chief murders are those of a literary agent and a thriller- writer, but, irregular though the lives of such men may be, these particular specimens seem a little too bad to be true. The Case of the Hanging Rope is goodish workaday stuff but little more. The crimes are committed in a manner both naive and over-elaborate, though the method by which the criminal is induced to betray himself is ingeniously unorthodox.

The Murderers of Monty is well written and, as the publishers announce on the jacket, its characters are ever so slightly less repellent than those in Mr. Hull's earlier books. The idea is an amusing one, but the culprit is soon apparent, and the chief interest lies in observing Mr. Hull's lifelike description of prigs, bores and bounders. Augustus Carp himself could not better it.

Last, and far, far slowest, comes Mr. Freeman Wills Crofts. In Found Floating, as in most of his books, are to be found all the vices mentioned in the first paragraph above, and yet with him one would net have it otherwise. His Bellmanism (" What I say three times is true ") ; his excruciating love scenes (" I love you, Runciman," she answered, " but until this terrible shadow has cleared away I cannot marry you ") ; the flat lollop of the writing ; all have their own particular attraction. Even the scenes between Inspector French and his wife have a kind of elephantine charm. Found Floating will not bear detailed description, but lovers of Inspector French (he does not, alas, appear until page 195) will enjoy it immensely. He has as much snap as a wet biscuit, and he'd never set the Thames on fire, though if anyone else did, he'd track the culprit down, if it took him a thousand pages. RUPERT HART-DAVIS.