6 JULY 1974, Page 5

Crime wnters

Sir: I liked very much the fine romantic Jekyll-and-Hyde conception of me, and of Bloody Murder, in your Crime Compendium. Jekyll Symons is somebody whose "reviewing of crime fiction has been a delight and an instruction for a generation," but alas Hyde Symons evidently got into the act, gleefully consigning Michael Innes to "the same discarded and reviled bracket of snobbish fun in which he has incarcerated Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh." A villain who could incarcerate three writers within a bracket is capable of anything, so it is not surprising to learn that Jekyll Symons has produced, in Bloody Murder, a piece of "essential reading for all crime fans," which Hyde has made at the same time "a pernicious and dangerous piece pf work," a book which is as a whole "a sustained and bitter attack on the classical detective story."

So far, romance. Reality is different. Here are a few phrases from the book about classical detective story writers. John Dickson Carr: "staggering skill. the conjurer's illusion is marvellously clever." Ellery Queen: "as exercises in rational deduction, these are certainly among the best detective stories ever written." S. S. Van Dine: "outrageous cleverness.., admiration should not be withheld . . . among the finest fruits of the Golden Age." G. K. Chesterton: "the best of these tales are among the finest short crime stories ever written."

Not too bitter? I think that from the anonymous Crime Compendium's point of view I have simply praised the wrong writers, preferring Van Dine to Sayers, the "appallingly cardboardish" (his bitter phrase) Agatha Christie to Ngaio Marsh? I quite see that CC thinks I am mistaken in this, as in preferring Hammett and Chandler, Highsmith and Simenon, to any of these Golden Age writers. I don't at all mind CC, or even P*tr*ck C*sgr*v* saying that I'm wrong, but it is simply not correct to say that I have attacked classical detective writers. Many are praised in my book. I'm pleased that I've delighted and instructed CC for a generation, but I wish I'd taught him to read a bit more accurately. Julian Symons 37 Albert Bridge Road, London, SW1I.