CRIME AND THRILL

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 15

CRIME AND THRILL

♦ NGAIO MARSH’S NEW STORY

Death in Ecstasy. By Nga’o Marsh. Geoffrey Bles. 320 pp. Fatal Accident. By Cecil M. Wills. Hodder and Stoughton. 318 pp. From W. S. Smart. Blue Silver. By Victor Bridges. Hodder and Stoughton. 316 pp. From W. S. Smart. Then Came Nicholas. By Pamela Hamilton. Hodder and Stoughton. 320 pp. From W. S. Smart.

It is an increasing pleasure to meet Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, Ngaio Marsh’s policeman. Partly this is because he has relaxed in manner, as he has become easier among the strange and—it is to be hoped—vast company of her readers. He is less mechanically playful, less pertinacious in quip and fancy. And partly it is because he is doing more detecting, and not so much sitting in the soft showers of Providence, as Sir Thomas Browne phrased it. His latest case, to which he is introduced as usual by that truffle-hound, Nigel Bathgate, and in which he is supported as usual by that Faithful Fido, Fox, originates in the poisoning of a disciple of the Reverend Father Jasper Garnette, in his temple, or House of the Sacred Flame, as she drinks from the chalice during one of his remarkable ceremonies. To the regular potion of Le Comte’s Invalid Port, with harmless if exciting additaments, had been conveyed a fatal charge of potassium cyanide. Father Jasper had a book in his room, which explained how to make the stuff; somehow it had got there from the shelves of Samuel J. Ogden, the 110 per cent. American whose financial investment was snugged in with his faith in Garnette’s gospel; the dead woman’s gift of £SOOO in bearer bonds to the House was missing from the safe; the dead woman’s will enriched Garnette; and among his circle of ecstatics drugs, jealousy, and hate disposed their victims to murder. An attentive reader will find himself pointed Alleyn’s way, here by a bit of slang, there by the tip of a poker; and not a page will be languidly turned.

Mr Wills’s Inspector Boscobell is a new character to the reviewer, but has appeared in five or six other books. This one recommends him and them. It is a plain, straightforwardly written detective story, in which Boscobell goes methodically to work, proves his case, pursues his quarry, and in the last chapter faces his captive—and death. The murder is a highly ingenious one, which but for unavoidable chance would have been accepted as accidental death. The number of possible suspects, on grounds of motive —the dead ipan’s ill-used wife, his discarded lover, the wife’s lover, and a nephew who benefits under the will—is not too large for a tight and credible plot. Mr Bridges is a very good hand at his own game. Dick Arnot’s first stroke of luck, after he had been discharged from a solicitor’s office under suspicion of theft, was the drawing of a horse in the Dublin sweep;

his nekt was that, while shadowing the managing clerk, Moxon, who had rigged things against him, ,he rescued pretty Jill Shenstone from kidnappers hired by the same villain: his thh'd was that he found in this exploit an invaluable ally, Spider Gull, and his fourth was that Blue Silver ran third in the Derby and put £SOOO in his pocket, so tlxat he could afford to devote himself to unmasking Moxon. His fifth piece of good fortune is held in reserve till the end of the book, but is in view long before.

“Then Came Nicholas” is an international thriller, in which nearly evex-ything depends on the reader’s accepting the central idea. The world’s smallest State, Serravalle, acquires supreme power to influence and determine world affairs. The secret is in good hands; but evil men design to possess and use it. This is the point at which young Nicholas Barry is dispatched to Serravalle—following two who had failed—to discover for the Foreign Office the secret of its threat. It is a pity that it is not easier to swallow the assumptions of the plot; for the story is freshly written and with no little humour.