It Won't Get • You Anywhere, by Desmond Skirrow (Bodley
Head, 18s.). Starts off in a `Very promising way, in the advertising world ,jf little problems and big solutions. Soon our herd, a part-time agent, is diverted to an investigation job and finds himself in a world that rapidly becomes just a little too fantastic and violent for the reader to believe in. Please, Mr Skirrow, write another thriller with equally amusing dialogue and the same delectable characters, but keep away from electronics and mad machines. The Witness, by Ray Grant Toepfer (Muller, 20s.). Beautifully written in a restrained and understated way, Mr Toepfer, a lecturer in English Literature in New York, has scored a direct and telling blow at race hatred in his account of the brutal murder of a teenage Negro boy; the inevitable killing of the one courageous Negro witness, and the final coming of justice. Read it and weep for man's inhumanity . A Dandy in Aspic, by Derek Marlowe (Gol- lancz, 18s). A cautionary tale of the life and -death of a double agent who attempted to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, so to speak. A sad, distinctive little book with a sweet- sour flavour.
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