THE CRIMINAL RECORD

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 4

THE CRIMINAL RECORD

A Clutch of Constables. By Ngaio Marsh. Collins. 253 pp.

The title of Dame Ngaio Marsh’s new book may suggest the Policeman’s Picnic or a security escort for a peace march, but these are not the constables referred to. The story tells of a river cruise between Norminster and Longminster, a stretch of country and riverside made famous by the paintings of John Constable. Troy Alleyn, wife of Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, is one of the eight passengers on this cruise. Her husband, working in America, suspects that all is not well and that one Foljambe, a man much wanted by Interpol for art frauds, drug-running, and sundry murders, could be one of her fellow passengers. And, as it turns out, this gentleman, known as The Jampot, is indeed enjoying the cruise and is up to no good as certain events at the Ramsdyke Weir bear mute but eloquent testimony. Which of the other seven—

all most unlikely people—is the Jampot who murders two fellow-travellers (and also another who would have liked to be a companion on the voyage) is a secret which is concealed right to the end of the book, and the author is as scrupulously fair in concealing his identity as she is skilful in building up the characters of all on board and in taking her readers with them on this very charming and interesting journey. There is not a dull moment in this delightfullywritten book, and it is one which could be a strong contender for the honour of being Ngaio Marsh’s best book to date. May there be many another. A Parade Of Cockeyed Creature*. By George Baxt. Jonathan Cape. 209 pp. Indeed they come in ail shapes and sizes like grotesques in a horror chamber at Coney Island. The story is set in New York, down somewhere near Greenwich Village, and begins quietly enough when a seemingly ordinary business man and his wife come to report to Detective Max Van Larsen that their son, Tippy, has disappeared. Routine enquiries do not seem to reveal much, but they set in motion the strangest set of circumstances: ordinary people take bn zany characteristics; backgrounds that seem staid enough are removed, and past and very-much-to-the-present associations with a Mafia type of underworld appear; petty thieving and drug-running on the largest scale seem strangely intertwined; and through it all there is gradually built up the character of the missing boy—a promising poet, and a petty thief, a lonely and bereft rebel, a warm-hearted boy who befriends a necrophile misfit whom the other children all shun, and a little savage who can spit and bite like a cornered weasel. Detective

Van Larsen, whose wife and son were killed in an automobile smash a few weeks before the story opens, becomes very attracted towards this boy whom he has never seen, and his interest is mixed up with his remorse that bis relationships with his dead wife and son were far from good. He becomes a warm friend of Sylvia Plotkin, Tippy’s school-teacher, and of Madame Vilna, a powerful former actress at the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, who greatly admired Tippy’s poetry and tried to help him. These, and many unsavoury characters, appear cleverly outlined in Mr Baxt’s penetrating and racy prose. They all take a firm grip of a reader’s lapels and drag him along their macabre by-ways. This clever book can be recommended. Its comedy and tragedy are alike compelling. A Stitch In Time. By Emma Lathen. Gollanez. 185 pp. Emma Lathen’s seventh thriller will be warmly welcomed by connoisseurs of detective fiction. It would be idle to say that the seventh Emma Lathen is as satisfactory as the sixth, the superlatively good “Murder Against the Grain,” but the new book is average Emma Lathen, and that will be sufficient for admirers. In this book she moves from Wall Street and the world of high finance—which she has made her own domain—into medicine, and because the Sloan Guaranty Trust becomes executor of the large estate of a suddenlydeceased man it falls to John Thatcher—well known to Lathen addicts—to investigate shenanigans in a Long Island hospital. The story is concocted with the usual Lathen ingenuity and, as usual, the

characterisation creates interesting people; also as usual the sharp literary style and the frequent wit enhance the reader’s pleasure. The Turquoise Spike. By Frank Archer. Herbert Jenkins. 175 pp. Inspector Joe Delaney of the San Francisco homicide squad, put in charge of an investigation into the violent death of Jack Draper, realised that money—and strangely-smelling money at that—would figure largely in the crime. Draper’s body was found one afternoon in his penthouse apartment and the only clue was a girl’s shoe whose steel-tipped heel had made a fatal hole in his head. Inspector Delaney set his experts to finding who owned that shoe and they soon did so. Much of the story is concerned with police methods of investigation, and this is how such stories should be written. The source of the victim’s wealth is something of a mystery, and the solution of such a mystery is usually f und in the machinations of "the Syndicate,” the rulers of organised crime throughout the city. As usual, people not connected with the syndicate are caught up in the machinery of the investigation and in the counter measures provoked by it. Police methods are well set out for the reader in the actions of Inspector Delaney and his colleague, Sergeant Cormack, both of whom come very much alive. There is continual fast action in the book, taking place in and around San Francisco, and the last scene of all has grippingly increasing tension as the murderer is cornered. The book is a good one of its type.