5 MAY 1928, Page 30

2L0. By Walter S. Masterinan. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.)—It is becoming

so much a convention in detective fiction to bring home the guilt at last to the apparently most innocent char- acter that we can now usually guess who the criminal is I We were right in surmising from the start that Robert Kenyon, the great dramatist, was himself the murderer of Kitty Lake, the young actress. But Mr. Masterman at least makes us realize how natural it was that another man should first have been tried and condemned to death ; and, in causing Kenyon to go mad and make his confession while broadcasting one night, this very clever author has certainly devised an original and powerful, if melodramatic, climax.