X Marks the Spot....

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22663, 18 March 1939, Page 20

X Marks the Spot....

FORTUNATE The Great Game. By If. C. Bailey. Victor Goliancz Ltd. 287 pp.

Fortune in the country, without his Lomas to be provoking but with a Lacy to be worse, without his Superintendent Bell but with a Lucas (“My Lucas,” indeed) to be as worthy. . . He finds a bat in a belfry, and it throws strangely out of belief the story of Mrs Carson, discovered with an almost lethal bump o.the head, in the Rev. Mr Troove’s church. Thereafter follow the death of a radio technician, meant to be thought electrocuted on the electrified railway line, and of the technician’s employer, meant to be thought killed in . the crash of a motor-car. But the electric power was off, at the time; and there was a neat hole in the petrol tank of the car, just where it could drip on to the exhaust pipe as it hotted, climbing a hill. So you have it. A fulllength story. All the tricks of Fortune—moans, Burgundy, strawberries and cream, and triumph. He sees his way.

ASEY DAISY ! The Annulet of Gilt. By Phoebe Atwood Taylor. Collins. 252 pp.

This is by far the most bizarre of the Asey Mayo stories, as may be suggested by the information that Miss Taylor mixes up in it Central European politics, American banking, a runaway elephant, a roadscarifier run-away-with, a bunch of daredevil young photographers, a divorcee seven (or perhaps eight) deep (and dead), a blonde with a marvellous past but a flinching trigger finger (also dead), a secret-ser-vice agent out of that past but steady on the trigger, the blonde’s political rival, hived with a bunch of green-liveried servants on Cape Cod, and Asey .... And Asey Mayo, certainly! Most fantastic of the Mayo stories, this is (of the last three or four) the most amusing, Aseyly. ‘

OY ! OY ! Of !

The Spy Master. By E. Phillips Oppcnhelm. Hodder and Stoughton. 288 pp. From W. S. Smart.

Oppenheim is hard to beat. You have the present, critical - European situation. You have England infested by foreign spies, two traitors working right alongside Admiral Cheshire, at the very centre of England’s safety. Cheshire knows all and shows all. Captain Godfrey Ryson very properly commits suicide; Commander Ronnie Hincks hangs on, helps Cheshire through with his scheme of feeding England’s enemies with false information and false confidence, and ends up as - the youngest captain of a British battleship. Cheshire foils Horace Florestan. the champion spy, and with a bullet in his shoulder saves the Empire; Greyes. the butler, knocks off Florestan—“l must apologise, sir. I was perhaps a little hasty"; and the love part of this grand affair works out lovely.

STRAIGHT AND GOOD Earth to Ashes. By Alan Brock. Nicholson and Watson Ltd. 276 PO.

Mr Brock gives his story the broad plot-basis of the Rouse murder case of a few years ago. Hopelessly involved in money trouble and love affairs, Rouse sought to get quit of both by the neat device of picking up a tramp on the road, knocking him on the head, sousing the unconscious man and the car with petrol, and throwing in a match. . . _. Rouse made few mistakes, but enough to lead to his conviction after an extraordinarily sensational —and controversial —trial. Mr Brock suits himself in adding, subtracting, and varying major fact and detail and the result will suit readers who like a straight, strong crime-story in which they are, for the most part, “inside” the mystery and cap watch th-j exciting work of detection with thnt advantage. The brains are supplied by new-style Constable Vine, who looks extraordinarily well in plain clothes, tailored for him, in fact, by the same artist as turns out the Chief Constable; and Vine’s brains are laboriously picked by oldstyle Inspector Kennedy. The humour of their relations, never exaggerated, is one of the merits of a story that moves under a fine control.

MIXING IT Double Death. A Murder Story by Dorothy L. Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Valentine Williams, F. Tennyson Jesse, Anthony Armstrong:, and David Hume. Victor Goliancz Ltd. 285 pp.

It’s been done before. It’s been very well done now. It will be done again, and it may be done better. (But if a word may be said, the game is not worth the candle.) Here you have the story begun, the murder prepared and committed, and Miss Sayers, Mr Crofts, and their successors diligently puzzling and checking and rationalising, chapter by chapter. iVad therv you have Mr Hume stepping in and fixing it all, in his large, careless, incredible way. Well, Hume sweet Hume, but one author at a time is enough for anybody who wants a detective story. BY TELEPHONE Death at Dancing Stones. By Mary Fitt. Nicholson and Watson. 283 pp.

Genteel reader, you who glean points of etiquette and propriety from your fiction, never again will you reply "Speaking,” when you answer the telephone and hear yourself asked for! This, curiously enough, is only one of the several ways in which the telephone enters into the plot-build of Miss Fitt’s story, one that will widen the popularity of Superintendent Mallett. He has the death of a millionaire to investigate—a millionaire knocked off during the celebration of his engagement to be married. This joyful occasion is disturbed by suspicions of the relation between fiancee and. adopted son. If Mallett has less to" do in arduous detection than in interesting conversation, no matter. It is a telephone conversation, in the end, that tells him the truth; and a fact about an unanswered telephone call, had he known it, would have told him sooner.

UT AGAIN Fourftngers. By Lynn Brock. Collins. 315 pp.

The “Unconsidered Trifle.” hence “Ut,” the inconspicuous Sergeant Venn, has the death of the scandalous Carla Waterlow to investigate; and he has with him, of course, De-tective-Constable Kither, under an official cloud because he has, disastrously, lost sight and trace of the Cabinet Minister in his charge. And Kither cannot get the Hon. Simon Parrin, spurlos versenkt, off his mind. ... No experienced reader will have the faintest doubt that Venn and Kither, exploring the causes that laid Carla dead of a bullet in her car on a wild heath, will pick up the trail of Kither’s missing Minister; and it is so. What is most puzzling, perhaps, is the twist of a plot that ought to have disclosed the theft of Carla’s fabulously valuable jewels but discloses their perfect safety. Mr Brock’s story is extremely complicated, very exciting, and fun all the way through.

SAINTLY PATTERN The Falcon Cuts In. By Drexel Drake. J. B. Lippincott Company. 378 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

“The Falcon” and his coadjutor, “Sarge,” follow the pattern of Mr Beeding’s “Saint” and that thickeared, devoted lump who calls him “Boss” and cannot bear to see bottles stay full. Well, “The Falcon’s” exploits are bold and the risks he takes are desperate and it seems he has his head screwed on right. But somehow. . . . But somehow, like Victoria, we are not amused, not much, no. Probably our fault. We have our likes and our dislikes. We are funny like that. So not to be warned off, reader dear. Provoked, rather.

AUSTRALIA’S VANISHING RACE

The Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them. By A. P. Elkin, Professor .of Anthropology, Uni* versity of Sydney. Angus and Robertson Ltd. 262 pp. (8/6.)

“Interest in the Australian abo : rigines as human personalities,” writes Professor Elkin, “has increased during the past few years, and nowadays there is a growing desire not only to treat them justly, but also to help them to rise culturally—if only we knew how. We realise that we have done them much wrong and injury during the past one hundred and fifty years, through ignorance even more than through callousness and indifference.” The subtitle of Professor Elkin’s book is itself an indication of this change of attitude, at any rate in some quarters, towards the aborigines. He offers his book as a contribution to that understanding which should inspire the white man’s attitude, to, treatment of, and work for what has been termed Australia’s vanishing race. This point of view, though belatedly arrived at, is highly praiseworthy. It is probable, however, that it has been adopted, if indeed it is yet adopted officially, too late to save the race. However this may be, Professor Elkin gives an authoritative account of the aborigines and their manner of life, with special reference to their complex system of social organisation, which contrasts so strikingly with the simplicity of their material culture. This latter, it is now appearing, was not due to any inherent inferiority, but enforced by circumstances. The aborigines, arriving in Australia in very early times and being isolated there, were compelled by the nature of the environment to be nomadic food-gatherers. As such no great development of material culture was possible. But they did evolve a highly complex system of social relationships and of ritual, and a view of life, death, and nature which represents an interesting animistic philosophy. All this Professor Elkin describes in careful detail. The numerous excellent illustrations add greatly to the value of his book.