New Thrillers

THE DEVIL’S STEPS, by Arthur Upfield.

This is a reprint—the story was originally published in 1946. But as Upfield is now dead all his stories about the part-aborigine Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bona parte become rather museum pieces.

Although Bony usually operates in the Australian bush, for this story he is assigned to Melbourne and (in view of the period in which it was written) it is not surprising that his assign ment involves a German who has left his Fatherland sometime before the collapse of the Third Reich. (THE DEVIL’S STEPS. Angus and Robertson. 19/6.) THE OTHER GIRL, by Lucy Walker.

According to the long list of titles to her credit most of Lucy Walker’s novels have concerned “love” and the “heart” (and one is entitled The Loving Heart). The present story however concerns two girls driving around Australia on a working holiday. When the car breaks down they team up with a shearing gang.

The story goes on to prove that bearers have loving hearts too. (THE OTHER GIRL. Collins. 21/-.)

Latest from the hard cover editions:—

The Gloved Saskia, By

William Colt MacDonald. This is a somewhat complicated plot in which a picture that looks like a Rembrandt that should have been in the museum in Dresden turns up in auction rooms in a Californian town. Several people covet the picture and this leads to murder. (Hodder and Stoughton; 20/-.)

The Windy Side Of The

LAW, by Sara Woods. In this Crime Club selection, Peter Hammond wakes up one morning in a strange hotel room with no clue to his identity and no memory of what has happened previously. Before he can do much about it, he is arrested on a drug-smuggling charge, finds that he has a fiancee whom he is on the point of marrying, and is quickly embroiled in a couple of murders. Antony Maitland, who has figured in some of this author’s other books, and is a sort of British Perry Mason, undertakes his defence. (Collins; 19/-,)

Dead Against The

LAWYERS, by Roderic Jeffries.

Radwick Holter is a successful and

ruthless criminal lawyer before he is caught up in something he cannot control and is forced to watch the processes of the law from the other side. A man is found murdered in Holter’s office and he is arrested for the crime that he knows he did not commit. (Collins Crime Club; 19/-.)

Murder On The Night

FERRY, by Bryan Edgar Wallace.

The author is the son of the late Edgar Wallace and his life has been packed with travel and interesting and exciting jobs. Only in recent years has he turned to writing thrillers—in between restoring a chateau in France in which he and his American wife now live. In his current novel, a French student in Paris discovers the sinister purpose behind some planned anti-American demonstrations. He sets out for London to inform the British Secret Service but is murdered before he gets there. The investigation of his murder leads to the uncovering of an international plot to change the balance of world power. In this current world of ours, good credible stuff! (Hodder and Stoughton; 20/-.)

Is There A Traitor In The

HOUSE? by Patricia McGerr. This is about a female spy, Selena Mead.

The place is Washington, DC, and the victim is a rabble-rousing Congressman. Jeffrey R. Stone. This is rather a frantic piece but it is

interesting to see how girls, spies and otherwise, live in the national capital. (Collins Crime Club; 19/-.)

The Green Drift, By John

Lyminton. If you don’t suffer from hallucinations before you read this book you will after. It’s science fiction—we think. It concerns houses that hover, big spiders that drop on the earth from outer space and people who appear to live in a fifth dimension. (Hodder and Stoughton; 20/-.)

The Berlin Memorandum

by Adam Hall is a Book Society Choice. It is a novel of espionage and psychology, played out against a background of Berlin, 1965.

In it one man, Quiller, pits his wits and his life against a resurgent Nazi organisation and, in particular, against its master-mind whom he had met in a Nazi concentration camp 20 years previously. (Collins; 25/-).

Death In A Sleeping City

is by John Wainwright, a newcomer to crime writing.

Wainwright is, in real life, a policeman, and his clinical, brutal and ruthless story of how a police department went after a gang of imported gunmen is a new slant on what are usually regarded as the friendly British police. (Collins; 18/6).