MURDER AND MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20508, 8 March 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

MURDER AND MYSTERY.

NEW SEASON'S YIELD.

"Dead Man's Quarry" by Lanthe Jerrold (Chapman and Hall). " The Twins Murder Case" by Horace Hutchinson (Murray).

"Peril at Cranbury Hall" by John Rhode (Bles). " Cock Crow" by Anthony Carlylo (Hodder and Stoughton).

Readers whose brows are neither too high nor too low to admire good writing and deft construction in a detective story may remember the promising beginning in this lino mado by Miss Lantho Jerrold in "The Studio Crime." But "Dead Man's Quarry" shows a distinct advance upou the earlier work. The dialogue and characterisation are crisp and convincing, and a delightful touch of humour lightens the grimness of the plot. At the outset wo meet a pleasant bicycling party on tho outskirts of Wales. One of its members is Sir Charles Price, tho long-lost inheritor of a local baronetcy who has spent most of his lifo in Canada and is the typical "colonial" of English novels, boisterous and uncouth bub with something vaguely unpleasant in the 6ackground. His colonial manners, however, do not long trouble the rest of the party, for on the following clay being missed by the rest, he is presently found dead from a gunshot wound at tho bottom of a disused quarry. Quarries, by tho way, aro such sinister spots in English novels that only ignorant overseas visitors venture near them. An amateur detective turns up in the person of a passing motorist and an exciting search for the criminal ends in the unmasking of a clever plot. * * # # # Claude and Raymond Speed, motor manufacturers, who iiguro in " Tho Twins Murder Case," aro twin brothers as alike as any two of tho cars they turn out. Apparently on excellent terms with one another, they come to spend a holiday in a Cornish seaside resort. The two go out fishing from the rocks one morning, but only Claude returns. A search reveals tho missing man's cap and a note left beneath a stone saying that tho writer has determined to end his troubles beneath the waves. The survivor returns to the business and with the help of the £IOO,OOO paid by the insurance company puts his business on its legs again and is just on the point of selling it for a largo sum to an American buyer, when he too, meets his death, but in his case by poison administered by some person unknown. At the inquest the jury returns- a verdict against Grainger, the American. The denouement is ingenious but improbable. The author uses the opportunity afforded by his story to make some trenchant remarks about the whole system of coroner's inquests and the mistake of paying too much attention to the verdicts there delivered. ***** John Rhode is a distinguished name in modern detective fiction and in "The Davidson Case" he constructed an extremely ingenious plot. But " Peril at Cranbury Hall" is not one of his best efforts, and bears traces of hurried workmanship. Oliver Gilrav. released from prison after doing seven years' penal servitude, the richly deserved reward of an audacious swindle hopes to live comfortably by blackmailing,..his associates. ' They have other ideas and Oliver becomes tho object of various ingenious but unsuccessful attempts at murder. The reader, however, has so little sympathy with tho victim of these attempts that their cumulative effect, is more comic than tragic, and the final—and this time successful—effort foils entirely to produce the requisite shock. The chief interest in this machine-made story is provided by the elaborately ingenious—though for tho purposes of tho plot, quite unnecessary—code used by some of the many criminals in the book. * * ♦ * * " Cock Crow" is rather a mystery than a murder story though it does contain a corpse in a lonely cottage on the edge of a gloomy wood. An eccentric millionaire makes a _ curious disposition of his property, leaving the bulk of bis fortune to tho legatee who shall have the quickness of wit to discover a certain gold cigarette-case belonging to the testator. " You may seek," so ran the strange instructions, " in the morning or at noon, in the hours after the noon, or at night. But not any one of you—nor any stranger —can possibly under any circumstances, come within an arm's reach of that, symbol except, at cock crow." Tho idea is good, but there is 100 much padding in the story and at least ono character, Rosita, the girlwife of the dead man, is an incredible conglomeration of conflicting types.