February Murders

THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY -Agatha Christie -Dodd, Mead ($2). A female corpse discovered in the sanctum of an uxorious English colonel (retired) titillates the gossipy countryside, puzzles Scotland Yard no end, until Miss Marple, crown princess of spinster sleuths, takes an'unobtrusive hand. Genuine old-crusted Christie.

THE WIDENING STAIN-W. Bolingbroke Johnson-Knopf ($2.50). A sultry French teacher and an elderly classicist with a weather eye for women are violently extinguished in a U.S. university library. A girl cataloguer, playing a hunch, risks her life and traps a murderer with a peculiar motive. A capable plot enriched with gay limericks on academic life.

THE MIGHTY BLOCKHEAD-Frank Gruber -Farrar & Rinehart ($2). Book pitchmen Cragg and Fletcher are plunged into a double murder and blackmail case that involves civil war in a New York comic-strip factory, slugfests in Iowa roadhouses and gangster hideaways. The amateur detective duo at their slangiest, most exuberant.

THE CRIMSON THREAD-Lilian Lauferfy -Simon & Schuster ($2). A trio of deaths in the family of a rich Connecticut autocrat is cannily elucidated by a roughhewn local law officer, with considerable help from a bright girl radio scripter. Emotion sometimes clouds the plot, but the general effect is pleasing.

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