Ilan Clark

Conflict 1941-45

BAR BAR OSSA

Henry Cecil

the case of Lord

Cochrane

A MATTER OF SPECULATION

4,e4(/ 4ove1,

Muriel Gantry

THE DISTANCE NEVER CHANGES Mary Renault writes:

'This vivid, compelling dream of the Minoan twilight grows on the imagination with every page. Miss Gantry's use of the art and archaeology is very stimulating.'

Elizabeth Salter

ONCE UPON A TOMBSTONE

a brilliant evocation of horror by one of the best crime writers of today

W. H.

Conaway

CROWS IN A GREEN TREE 'a hymn in praise of the natural life and nonconformism— cocks snook after snook at the sobersides and townees and prudes — energy, joviality and delight in life' Jour., meows, S. Telegraph

John Harris

THE CROSS OF LAZZAR 0

the author of

THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM at his most brilliant.

lots le*ate4

Maurice Procter

DEATH HAS A SHADOW

'colourful, gutsy writing ; and the red herring is most skilfully deployed' Sun AvIr Had4vtaft dr.d.

SPECTATOR, MAY 28, 1965

of an earthly paradise Without a guffaw of dis- belief, or a ruinous chuckle. In Word of Mouth there is an element of raucous humour which is very funny taken on its 'own, but which turns what the dust-jacket insists (to my astonishment) is a 'tragic novel' into a racy spoof of its own characters. The trouble is that Mr. Weidman's attitude to Deucalion is rather shifty: one moment he is very serious, the next he has mis- directed his irony on to the very parts of his 'characters and their endeavours which we should take most seriously. The humour inadvertently knocks the bottom out of the serious intentions of the novel, and the result is a kind of unen- lightened facetiousness which is brilliantly funny but rather fruitless.