A NEW DETECTIVE.

Southland Times, Issue 21662, 26 March 1932, Page 11

A NEW DETECTIVE.

In writing “Death to the Rescue,” Milward Kennedy set out with the amicable intention of providing a mystery story with a detective whose successes increase the reader’s dislike for him. To achieve this he has to devise an original situation and that is enough to recommend him in the field of detection fiction. The story may be called a gruesome comedy, but it is never horrible, and the character drawing is so excellent that one is quickly caught in the net so neatly cast by the author. Most of the story is told in the first person by Mr Gregory Amor of the pleasant village of Grayhurst. Mr Amor, w’ho regards himself as a cultured man and has Cambridge behind him as evidence of the fact, is somewhat of a lion in Grayhurst, and when his neighbours, a mysterious couple called Morton, decline to truckle or even to recognize him with the respect he considers to be his due, he scents a discreditable past. He decides to uncover this discreditable past, and his qualities as an amateur de tective develop as he pursues his unkind task. Mr Amor is a thoroughly distasteful man, and though one cannot avoid feeling some admiration for the skill with which he works one is never “for” him. Such a story, of course, must have its surprises, and they appear in the final chapters in a satisfying form, but Mr Amor has shown that he is an effective sleuth and Mr Kennedy by that time has convinced his reader that this is one of the outstanding detective novels of the moment. I hope he does another. “Death to the Rescue” by Milward Kennedy, published by Messrs Gollancz Ltd., London.