... By K. JOHN. By Taylor Caldwell. BECAUSE the country is vast, remarks Taylor Caldwell, Americans have evolved an architecture on the same scale. One might add that in recent years the inspiration has been at work on some of their novelists. As applied to fiction, it may be a true analogy, or a case of Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat; either way, it seems responsible for a number of ...

... . By LAWRENCE GOWING. (Standing-in for John Russell on holiday.) THE pleasures of the English comic stage are incomparable. My patent safety day and night light, the plumber calls his Polly in Caste, my brightest bat's wing and most brilliant burner! What endearment could be more winning? And at the other end of St. Martin's Lane from the Duke of York's there is to be seen a yet more ...

... By Darwin L. Teilhet. Darwin Teilhet's book has nothing epic about it; but a great deal of suspense, humour and sharp reality. It is the author's first attempt at straight fiction-- but he had not far to go; and one cannot see why he should ever go back again. As in The Fear Makers, he writes of a wounded soldier back from the war. Alvah said in one of his letters home that after this he ...

... By Erie Stanley Gardner. Then why bother to devise a problem I cannot think; yet how lucky that some writers will go on doing it. Erie Stanley Gardner does it in The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito, set in the Californian desert. A rich prospector, Banning Clarke, has been so mis guided as to house up, and as a natural result has developed heart trouble his only roof should have been the sky. ...

... By Hammond Innes. Hammond Innes' novel takes us from the desert to the Dolomites. Neil Blair has been sent out to Col da Varda bv a film director, with instructions to keep his eyes open. He has no idea what to expect, or why anything should be expected the place is only a mountain hut reached by cable-sleigh. But it does appear to have its secrets the last owner was a German war criminal, ...

... I . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT seems to be the fashion in certain critical circles at the moment to decry the romantic thriller, the spy him with a handsome hero, a glamorous heroine, and professional actors using make-up and all the trimmings, in favour of the dry, documentary, candid camera affair. There is held to be some special merit in a film that contains bits of newsreel, shots of the ...