Wilful, Deliberate and Unlawful
Trouble at Wrekin Farm By Josephine Bell. (Longmarts. 7s. 6d.) Murder Comes Back. By H. Ashbrook. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 75.6d.) The Unfortunate Murderer. By Richard Hull. (Crime Club. 7s. 6d.) Good Night, Sheriff. By Harrison Steeves. (Richard Cowan. 8s. 6d.) Diabolic Candelabra. By E. R. Punshon. (Gollancz. 8s. 6d.) Body in the Library. By Agatha Christie. (Crime Club. 7s. 6d.) THE appearance of the Home Guard in a detective story is a warning more deadly than any red sky at morning: like the line " Won't you sit down " in a play, it is the sign manual of the mechanical, the obvious and the uninspired. Trouble at Wrekin Farm not only trots out the Home Guard, but also has a German 'plane land to take off a member of the Fifth Column who has obtained possession of a secret instrument. Luckily for us all, there are exceptions to every rule, and Miss Josephine Bell triumphantly retrieves this hopeless situation. Wrekin Farm is a quite credible place with a T.T. licence, a grass-drying plant, and land-girls, and it is run by a harassed producer-retailer whose troubles will win him the sympathy of all farmers (althoUgh his handling of his bull is open to a good deal of criticism). This is a guessing game with the -emphasis on suspense and excitement rather than on logic, and of its kind it is excellent. Murder Comes Back is also a guessing-game thriller, but of the ninepin school—at the guessing-time so many of the suspects have been eliminated by death in various forms that there is little for the reader to do but guess right. Again, of its kind, good ; but this is a type of thriller that seems to have gone out of fashion and to be as dated as a ball dress of 1928. The Unfortunate Murderer is nearly very good, a nice sober story based on the antipathies of overworked people on the management side of a munitions works. The industrial background is effective and =- usual, and great play is made with the splendours of modern methods in accounting. Unfortunately, a half-Italian saboteur is knocking about loose in the story, and he manages to disorganise that, if not the factory. It is pleasant to be able to saline the quality of freshness in a detective story ; one feels that Mr. Hull had a good deal of fun writing it—a nice change in the genre whose producers seem as a rule to be pursued by Time's Chariot rather than to follow inspiration. The Unfortunate Murderer has a fair and well-planned puzzle and goes with a swing.
Good Night, Sheriff, presents a startling puzzle to the reader which has little to do with the story. The jacket shows a picture of an extensively unclad young lady with green hair and eyes clutching an automatic pistol and manifestly seeking whom she may devour: there is, no such young lady in the book, and the firearm used is .30o sporting rifle. -What the Professor of English at Columbia University will say when he sees the dress. in which his offering has reached the English public affords a pleasing speculation for an idle moment, but the mystery of how this particular visual image entered the head of the designer of the jacket will baffle the reader for ever. The story is handled in an agreeable and adult fashion, the puzzle is sound, fairly presented to the reader, and can be solved by rational means. The author's respect for the morality of the killer and the question of Euthanasia can be counted on to provoke disagreement or uneasiness in the reader's mind. Good Night, Sheriff, is a throw-back to the Wilkie Collins school of detective story, and very nice too.
The Diabolic Candelabra is also a throw-back, going a good deal further than Collins to the terrors of Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis. We have the scion of a noble house living in a cave ornamented with El Greco pictures, Cellini candelabra, and patters in human bones, where he discovers a cure for cancer (and rattling good essence for flavouring chocolates), and finally foully done away with amid no end. of brou-ha-ha. The whole thing is absolutely absurd and rather good fun once it gets going.
The Body in the Library is slightly sub-standard Christie. Miss Marple dominates the scene like bad weather at a ,garden party, an forces the critical reader on guard with her tedious mannerisms. I. seems excessively unlikely that any killer would murder a seconz victim merely for the sake of getting an alibi for a first murder. There is also a great deal of play in the story with the necessity of placing a body in a particular place in order to compromise character, but why the elaborate and Iagoesque malice of the conspirators is directed against this wretched fellow is ,never ex. plained. The practice of using live bait is also to be deprecated we are told that the probable third victim has a weak heart an would fade at any sudden shock, yet the poor man is left alone in the dark to be stalked by the killer. It seems. unlikely that this method of detecting a murderer would win police approval. The solution seems so highly improbable that the reader is left with very strong feeling that Miss Marple has succeeded in pinning the killings on the wrong people and that the dear old owner of the
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