23 MARCH 1956, Page 22

A CORPSE FOR CHARYBDIS. By Susan Gilruth. (Hodder and Stoughton,

10s. 6d.) Mrs. Gilruth has a neat, smooth, even faintly witty style which deserves more credible characters than she has dreamed up for this cosy little number about a pleasure cruise in a ship filled by paper-thin puppets one has met before, and all too often : the foreigners who speak funny and eat garlic, the spinster schoolmarms, the sinister 'Levantine' who isn't quite a gent, and the girl with a mop of flame-coloured hair, slanting emerald eyes, and scarlet-tipped fingers, who gets heaved over- board, and not a moment too soon for your reviewer.