THE RIVERSIDE VILLAS MURDER

Kingsley Amis, that literary traveling man, has written about the classical detective story which he admires (particularly John Dickson Carr's wheezy Dr. Fell) and now he has emulated the form which succeeds far better as a send-up than a story — that is a crime story since these elements, particularly the denouement, are sheer "kerfuffle." It is however to be pleasurably read for its good humor, for the likability of Peter Furneaux, a fourteen year-old as eager to solve the crime as he is to be sexually initiated (not by standoffish Daphne, a year older, but by attractive Mrs. Trevelyan, many years older), for its letter perfect referrals to the period — the '30's, and perhaps for its Colonel Manton, a detective, one of those rousing Fell-ows who can be overheard declaiming "The game's afoot." Not much of a game, as we indicated (a bloodied victim walks through the windows of Peter's house to lie fallen cold and dead) — not as seductive as his ghost story The Green Man — but a bit of cheerful nostalgia for those who mourn the demise of the red herring on the garden path.