The New Mysteries

INSPECTOR MAIGRET AND THE DEAD GIRL, by Georges Simenon (192 pp.; Crime Club; $2.75). The battered body of a young virgin, dressed in a cheap, rented evening gown, is found on a dark Paris street. That is all the inspector knows when he begins to collect the clues to an obscure, unhappy life. Until the last few wildly improbable pages it is medium-good Simenon, as fascinating as a real-life case because of painstaking police detail.

STAB IN THE DARK, by Joe Rayfer (218 pp.; Morrow; $2.75), makes excessive wickedness seem just about as dull as excessive virtue. A group of down-at-heel U.S. artists wasting their time and money in Guadalajara manage to be both bored and boring as they dabble with drink, dope, adultery and murder. Best feature: the exotic setting of purple trees and pink adobe walls, as vividly colorful as a Mexican travel poster. But the characters are two-dimensional poster figures, too.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT, by Rex Stouf (184 pp.; Viking; $2.75), plunges Nero Wolfe, with his creator's usual sharp eye for the headlines, into the hypertense world of Manhattan advertising agencies and a $1,000,000 quiz contest sponsored by a perfume manufacturer. The murderer shows the bad taste and worse judgment to strike in Wolfe's own home. Not really baffling as a whodunit, but Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's legman, is reliably agreeable company as the yarn-spinner.

A DYING FALL, by Henry Wade (241 pp.; Macmillan; $2.75). After the wealthy widow marries the fortune-hunting gambler, does she fall or is she pushed from the second-floor landing to her death? One of those expert British suspense jobs, the story moves suavely on two levels; a seemingly slow-paced tale set in hunting country, it crackles with undercurrents of blackmail, violent passion and murder. Topnotch in its class, it has the season's best double-whammy ending.

CRIME FOR Two, edited by Frances and Richard Lockridge (256 pp.; Lippincott; $3), is a collection of short stories by members of the Mystery Writers of America. All the yarns have previously appeared; most of them are worth reprinting. The volume contains some expert craftsmanship by such pros as Q. Patrick, Michael Gilbert, Ellery Queen, Brett Halliday and Margery Allingham.

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