Murder, Cubed

THE TRAGEDY or X--Barnaby Ross--Viking ($2).

During its seven-year life the Viking Press has never published a detective story. This criminal negligence the editors are enabled to expiate by the discovery of an "almost perfect mystery." The Tragedy of X strikes a happy balance: not perfect enough to render its readers completely insomniac, it has points enough to make them lose at least a minimum desired amount of sleep.

Dissipated Broker Harley Longstreet, to celebrate his engagement to Cherry Browne, gives a party at a New York Hotel. Longstreet's business-partner John De Witt, his wife and daughter, six other acquaintances attend. In spite of gin, the party is far from merry since nearly all the guests have particular reasons for hating their host. He invites them to continue the celebration at his West Englewood home. Because of a sudden shower they all board a crosstown trolley-car. Before they have gone two blocks Longstreet falls dead. In his coat pocket is found a ball of cork prickly with needles, poison-tipped.

Subsequent investigation yields nothing to Inspector Thumm and Attorney Bruno. In despair they turn to Drury Lane, a retired actor who had helped them on a criminal case before. Actor Lane is an esthetic Sherlock Holmes who quotes Shakespeare, names his servants after Shakespearean characters, lives in an Elizabethan village of his own creation, takes sunbaths in a breechcloth on an Elizabethan tower. He soon figures out who must have committed the murder, but he has a long way to go to get enough evidence for a legal conviction. Two more murders, an attempted suicide, a backtrack to a murder in South America keep the clues changing like chameleons. With the baffled sleuths, the reader is kept on pins & needles until Actor Lane, masking himself as dead Broker Longstreet, unmasks the murderer by a logical surprise.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.