Murders of the Month

WILFUL AND PREMEDITATED--Freeman Wills Crofts--Dodd, Mead ($2).

Poison is the weapon; the motive, gain. The author first shows the victim's death, then the murderer's modus operandi. Inspector French is brought forward on the trail. In the ensuing hunt the reader feels himself the quarry. Explanation of detection follows, with Inspector French being raised in rank once again.

BOMBAY MAIL--Lawrence G. Blochman --Little, Brown ($2). Death and fast action take place on the crack Trans-Indian Express. First victim is the Governor of Bengal, second the Maharaja of Zunjore. Inspector Prike, sorting suspects, encounters rubies, secretaries, cobras, priests, spies. Village scenes of India, butterflies, toxicologist and acrobat flit past before the inspector brings conclusion to a crime that beat the book to the Screen.

THE VENNER CRIME--John Rhode-- Dodd, Mead ($2). The insatiably curious Dr. Priestley correlates a "death from natural causes," an "ordinary disappearance" and a bill for electricity into a solution for one of the Yard's unsolved cases.

THE MANUSCRIPT MURDER--George Limnelius--Crime Club ($2). A lifelong association of four men culminates in the murder of the most despised among them. Reading a detective story with these men as characters brings forth the killer.

THE SECOND BULLET--Lee Thayer-- Sears ($2). Peter Clancy, with his incomparable "gentleman's man" Wiggar, falls into a first-class murder case when they stop for gasoline at the mansion in the New Jersey hills. Concealment of his identity and the dexterity of Wiggar enable Clancy to mingle with the neighbors, to make friends with a half-crazy animal trainer, to see justice done.

MR. DEATH--Carlton Wallace--Crime Club ($2). The extortioner's slogan is "pay or die," and so successful is he that Superintendent Bendilow of the Yard leaves job and pension, even simulates death to catch him.

MURDER OF A MISSING MAN--Arthur M. Chase--Dodd, Mead ($2). With a carload of near-witnesses, including a New York detective, it takes a sharp-eyed little spinster to ferret out both the identity and the murderer of the corpse in the end compartment. The voluble Mr. Goldstein helps.

THE DEATH WISH--Elisabeth Sanxay Holding--Dodd, Mead ($2). Long Island society, his neighbors and his rich wife are too much for poor, ponderous Delancey. Had it not been for the calm young guest next door, he might have been convicted of two murders.

Two O'CLOCK COURAGE--Gelett Burgess--Bobbs-Merrill ($2).

MURDER COULD NOT KILL--Gregory Baxter--Macaulay ($2).

MURDER RUNS IN THE FAMILY--Hulbert Footner--Harper ($2).

*ULYSSES--James Joyce--Random House ($3.50). /-Not be confused or compared with Paul Jordan Smith's A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce (Covici, Friede; $1), an inferior, often misleading booklet first published in 1927, now reissued. Commentator Gilbert's book (Knopf; $5). written under Joyce's supervision, is the only official key yet published. *Some two years ago Ireland tried to bury the hatchet by selecting Joyce as a member of the newly-founded Irish Academy of Letters. Joyce refused the honor with typical arrogance, because "living in France, he finds it difficult to realize how important the academy seems to men of Irish letters."

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