Books: Murder in Midsummer

The best of modern mysteries equal or outrank the run-of-the-rental-shelf “straight” novel in almost every department—plotting, characterization, background. They are novels of emotional conflict, in unusual settings, books that wrestle with the problems of frustration or greed or success. The traditional hole in the victim’s head is often added as a sort of casual dividend. Seasonal items:

NOT ME, INSPECTOR, by Helen Reilly (207 pp.; Random House; $2.95), the author’s 32nd published novel, is peopled with stylish, upper-middle-class Manhattanites who yearn for just those few extra thousands a year. This sort of yearning leads to murder for profit. The romantic side of the plot, offering the heroine a wide choice of elegant men, documents the complexity of a woman’s mind and heart. The case is wrapped up by Inspector McKee, nagged by his boss the commissioner, who, in turn, is nagged by political pressures. Expertly tooled and shined, soundly constructed.

MURDER AND BLUEBERRY PIE, by Frances and Richard Lockridge (192 pp.; Lippincott; $2.95), sets some highly improbable booby traps for the Lockridges’ nice, likable people in their quaintly respectable Connecticut town. The authors are such old hands at making their characters and backgrounds believable that the reader is persuaded to accept the whole bag of outrageous melodrama: hanky-panky with a million-dollar will, baffling telephone calls in the middle of the night, mysterious footprints on the terrace, the fatal mugging of a key suspect, pursuit by a killer through a raging summer storm. Deserving of Favorite Sleuth status: Detective Nathan Shapiro of Homicide. Manhattan West, a shambling, sad-eyed man who suspects that he is not really up to his job and ought to be pounding a beat in Brooklyn. Shapiro asks what seem to be all the wrong questions—but he ends up with all the right answers.

SHADOW OF GUILT, by Patrick Quenfin (211 pp.; Random House; $2.95), has a hero who is both a stuffed shirt and a weakling. He hesitates to tell his wife, a beautiful, bustling, overbearing heiress, that he wants to divorce her and marry his secretary, a colorless, clinging type named Eve. This triangular time bomb is the dominant theme. The younglove interest is entrusted to a boy who seems to be losing his wits (his mother died in a mental institution) anoa pretty juvenile delinquent who is in danger of making a habit of motel weekends with married men. The murder victim is a gigolo-like blackmailer. Author Quentin is a skilled carpenter at knocking together a neat puzzle and in sending the reader haring off down a dozen false trails. But it is hard to be sympathetically involved with any of this yarn’s not-very-winning people. The attractive character is Lieut. Trant of Homicide, who is “priestlike,” gentle, almost sorrowful—and coldly aware of all the damaging facts the suspects are trying to hide.

THE REAL GONE GOOSE, by George Bagby (189 pp.; Crime Club; $2.95), features a far-out crew of unwashed, unmannerly beatniks who carry on a practically nonstop party in the apartment next door to the narrator’s. They make free with George’s flat, his booze and his good name. When Sabra, the oddball girl who is the beats’ hostess and bankroll (“the goose that laid the golden eggs”), gets herself murdered. George turns out to be the No. 1 suspect. It takes all that his friend Inspector Schmidt can do to get George out of this one. The beatniks are mild fun, but the plotting gets pretty intricate.

THE SHORT CASES OF INSPECTOR MAIGRET, by Georges Simenon (188 pp.; Crime Club; $2.95), are five stories about the pipe-smoking inspector, published in book form for the first time, and smoothly translated by U.S. Mystery Pros Lawrence G. Blochman and Anthony Boucher. The book entertainingly ambles through the sounds, sights and smells of Paris and the provinces, with the inspector who has the looks of a small French shopkeeper and the mind of a great French logician.

THE TROUBLE AT SAXBY’S, by John Creasey (182 pp.; Harper; $2.95), is basically a cliffhanging, Organization Man thriller about the fortunes and prospects of Chief Inspector Roger (“Handsome”) West of New Scotland Yard. Handsome has been the white-haired boy of the Yard for years, but things don’t look too good for him now that the new assistant commissioner is in charge. Will Handsome get as much rope in solving murders as he got in the old days? Will he even survive the new-broom regime? The fascinating inside details of Yard operations are adroitly blended with touches of murder, grand larceny and young romance. Nobody is better at this particular mixture than Novelist Creasey (TIME, June 8), author of about 360 novels under various names, including J. J. Marric, creator of the distinguished “Gideon” series.