MURDER AND SUDDEN DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25736, 6 January 1945, Page 2

MURDER AND SUDDEN DEATH

They Were Seven. By Eden PhtU-potts.-(Hutchinson.! 10s 6d. P Sing a Song of Murder. By Peter Drax. (Crime Book Society-Hutcnin son.) 10s 6d.

Banana Mystery The death of Hannibal Knott, from eating a poisoned banana, is an event beneficial to, if not to say eagerly anticipated by. his seven surviving relatives, six nephews and a niece, tejoicing in the names of Cypress, Hope, Cyril Julian, George. Tom, and Arthur Mr Phillpotts has as his objective in this book the building of suspense and suspicion about these various, carefully-delineated people. It is no condemnation of They Were Seven to say that he more surely in the latter part of his brief than the former. A murder mystery which is not ever of itself very enthralling. and requires in the end the passage of 20 years for its elucidation, is likely to provide dullish entertainment for the reader who picks up a hook such as this expecting excitement and action. But Mr Phillpotts shows in his study of the several principal people in the story, and no less in depicting the Kentish scene—he has forsaken his familiar Devon in this novel —his old skill in portraiture and the interpretation of rural character. Our copy of the book is from Whitcombe and Tombs. Unknown Soho The most credible character in Mr Drax’s Sing a Song of Murder is a member of that usually quite unbelievable class, the fictional detective. His name is Inspector Harley; and he is possessed of the profound knowledge that detection is not assisted by swearing, rarely by fisticuffs, and only incidentally by madly tearing about the countryside in high-power cars, but although Harley, as has been indicated, uses his brains, he has a very complex problem to solve when he goes in pursuit of the murderer of one known as “ the Rigger.” To suspect the tough and irreverent Tooley, who has just been released from gaol, is natural. The story is centred not so much on Harlev's pursuit of Tooley as in Tooley’s relations with the amiable Patra gang; not so much on Scotland Yard as on a Soho that the Londoner himself could scarcely suspect as he passes through its narrow streets, unless under the imaginative guidance of Mr Drax. Our copy of this thriller is from Whitcombe and Tombs. A. L. F.