LIGHT RELIEF

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24051, 13 September 1943, Page 4

LIGHT RELIEF

QUINTO

Murder Chop Chop. By James Norman. Michael Joseph. 192 PP» Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Chinese guerillero school at Lingtung being upset by possible murder, certain murder, and attempted rrfurder, its huge and genial Mexican commander, Quinto, turns detective, assisted by an exquisite beauty, a calligrapher, a baseball fan, and China’s secret service ace; hampered by a harddrinking woman journalist, an inscrutable banker, a missionary with a past, an intrusive unknown in a Yellow Coat, and bandits. An astounding feat, Mr Norman makes this mixture turn out very good as a detective story, exciting. amusing, and full of little plums of observation on China and the Chinese and their war of freedom. ZOO Dum-Dum; His Book of Beasts. By John Kendall. George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. 91 pp, (7/6 net.) "Dum-Dum,” one of Mr Punch’s, most ingenious versifiers, gathers here some of his happiest ingenuities about animals. How'charming, for instance, is the easy-going cow, suddenly exhilarated to a frenzy for freedom on being decanted from a railway truck:

She cleared the morning platform that was crowded for the Mail (up) And bolted for tire open with the tassel of her tail up. "Dum-Dum’s” fun and fancy inspire his illustrator, L. R. Brightwell, in sprightly drawings.