MYSTERY STORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 84, 9 April 1932, Page 17

MYSTERY STORIES

AND RECENT THRILLERS

There is crime in plenty in. "The Bright Nemesis"—five murders and a suicide, to be precise. The author, John Gunther, has previously written novels about Chicago, but here he gives a picture, of the Balkans, of some queer people; in a little backward town. He unfolds his mystery in such a way that the reader feels that he is finding things out for himself, that along with Maxfred B. Tate, the pertinacious American correspondent, he is on the track of Kavadagh and his dark actions. This is a thriller removed from. the commonplace, one that will exercise the mind and the imagination. "The Quest of the Vanishing Star," by Robert Ladlino (Herbert Jenkins), is one of thoso breathless yarns in which the Secret Service and the international plotters manage to bunglo one another's destruction long enough to keep the story going for somo three hundred pages.

"Murder on Monday ... ?" by Charles Barry, turns on the interesting notion that it might matter considerably on what day the victim died. This notion is, perhaps, shown to be erroneous a little- early in the book, but, since the murderer acted under its influence, this does not greatly matter. It must be owned that the usual process of elimination works too easily. The criminal is soon distinguished by the brand of obvious innocence on his brow. The working out, however, is ingenious enough to be worth following.

The victim in "The Room with No Escape" is a writer of crime stories who is persuaded, as an experiment, to impersonate- the corpse in a mockmurder which is easily turned into a roal one. This is a refinement of technique which is almost staggering. The author, Alex. Barber, is to bo congratulated on having invented a new detective.

Three near escapes from death in three days, and then a fourth mysterious incident, convince tho charming young lady in "Peril at End House" (by Agatha Christie—Collins) that she is involved in some sinister plot. Poirot, a famous Belgian detective, unravels the mystery. :

"Tho Hawkmoor Mystery," by W. H. Lane Crawford, depends for its thrill upon the well-worn plot of a marvellous jewel stolen from an Indian temple, which becomes tho centre of a series of mysterious happenings. First there is the suicide of the man who stole the diamond, and then follow incidents during a week-end house party at the home of this man, which has been left to his closest friend, who has undertaken the task of discovering the cause of suicide, or, as ho believes, of the murder.

When a country clergyman turns into a homicidal nianiae and bestows upon certain of his parishioners the benefits of his investigations into the properties of certain deadly fluids, matters in the parish are likely to be somewhat out of the ordinary. This happens in "The Vicar's Experiments," by Anthony Rolls. (Geoffrey Bles.)

In "The Prince of Spies," by G. Davison (Herbert Jenkins), a man with a twisted face and hypnotic eyes (met with before in a previous thriller by the same author) attempts to bring about the destruction of Britain. He is naturally frustrated at the last moment._ What a change it would be if the villain in such yarns sometimes succeeded!

A skeleton hopping out of a chest makes a good jacket for. "The Borgia Cabinet," by J. S. Fletcher (Herbert Jenkins). ■ Poisons are tho main ingredients of the story.