Books: Bound Clues

FILE ON BOLITHO BLANK — Dennis Wheatley—Morrow ($1.95).

By slurring significant facts, emphasizing irrelevant ones, most detective story writers employ the description of clues as a means of leading a reader astray. Last week an ingenious new type of detective fiction appeared. Honestly and simply, it presents the reader with all the clues in the order and in the fashion that the police uncover them, lets him form his own conclusions about the crime. File on Bolitho Blane is a collection of various objects found at the scene of a murder, together with telegrams, memoranda, stenographic reports of interviews with suspects, bound together in a bulky loose-leaf binding. First exhibit is a telegram from Carlton Rocksavage to the police of Miami, Fla., announcing the suicide on his yacht of Bolitho Blane. Next is a police memo ordering Officer Keys Kettering to investigate. Most of the subsequent exhibits are Kettering’s reports, but there are also police files on the individuals involved, photographs of the scene of the crime and of the passengers on the yacht, letters found in staterooms, a small sample of a blood-stained chintz curtain, a burnt match and some hair.

Novel at least in the manner of its telling, File on Bolitho Blane gets under way slowly as Kettering’s reports first establish that almost everybody on board the yacht had some good reason for wanting Blane killed. The cast of characters includes two rival financiers, a count, a bishop, a British philanthropist, a Japanese promoter, a secretary, two young ladies, and the evidence apparently involves them all impartially. The solution of the mystery—by a detective on shore from the same evidence that is made available to the reader—is sealed in the back of each volume.

A publishing sensation in England, File on Bolitho Blane sold 30,000 copies there in ten days. Manufacturing the editions created unique printing and binding problems, since 13 kinds of paper were used and small clues had to be placed in separate cellophane envelopes in each book.