Books: Amusing Armenian

HELL! SAID THE DUCHESS—Michael Arlen—Doubleday, Doran ($2). A trickster in a tricky trade. Author Dikran Kouyoumdjian (Michael Arlen) has altered the cut of his books at fashion’s wink. Ladies in green hats are long passées, but duchesses are never out of style. Hell! Said the Duchess is nicely calculated to tickle the fancy of detective-storyaddicts, of tycoons tired of trilogies, of all persons except young children who are for the moment sick of being serious.

Author Aden’s title is a calculated come-on. The Duchess never finishes the well-known sentence and Author Arlen’s advertised salacious spread, of course, proves a Barmecide’s feast. His brillian-tined tale tells of a young, beautiful, rich but extremely respectable Duchess, a widow who is a model of propriety to less proper peers and inferiors, and of the ghostly suspicion that falls on her when London becomes the scene of a series of lustful murders.

Though the Duchess rarely goes out in the evening, her alibis are not so good as they might be. A policeman, perspiring with embarrassment, is about to take her into custody when her intrepid kinsman, a V. C., risks a fate worse than death to prove her innocence. Author Arlen eventually saves his heroine’s reputation, without materially damaging his own.