... . By H. C. Branson (Bo dley Head 8s. 6 d.) This week's detective novel gets its title from one of the witches in Macbeth By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes. And something very wicked had obviously been at work in New Paget (U.S.A.), for the local doctor had been shot apparently by a jealous husband who had afterwards murdered his own wife and com mitted suicide. ...

... . By Beverley Baxter, M.P., with Illustrations by Grant Macdonald. Hutchinson 21s.) The publishers describe this book as a selection from the weekly theatre criticisms which Mr. Baxter has now been contributing to the Evening Standard for more than six years. But it is much more' than that. Mr. Baxter's criticisms can be read, if the reader so wishes, for their verdicts on particular plays and ...

... 44 DAPHNE LAUREOLA IT is a Soho restaurant and in some disarray. The place, we gather, is being repaired. But who will worry? At Le Toil aux Pores the play must go on. Two spivs bargain in a corner. A bored man and woman argue. Four Cockneys twitter. Yorkshire and Poland are represented. And, enthroned in an alcove at the back, is a vision in shining satin: a lone diner who seems content to ...

... THE divine Sarah is an excellent subject for a biography; volatile, uncon ventional, world-famous to this day and spectacular in her own. Sarah Bernhardt (Hurst and Blackett. 21s.) is her story as told by her granddaughter, and it is not only a record of her stage triumphs, but a fairly intimate account of her not very private life. Even as a child Bernhardt was tempestuous and was already ...

... At The Theatre Summer in December (Comedy) An ...

... I [i Reviewed by Trevor Allen I SMILE when authors are rapped for not doing what they never set out to do. Kay Summersby was General Eisen hower's driver for three exciting years. She wrote Eisenhower Was My Boss (Werner Laurie, 11s. 6d.) as a record of personal experience and to show him and other war leaders in their off-the-record moments. Inevitably some may seem trivial for the simple ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs DO you think of proposing, of becoming engaged? If so, seek out The Happy Yes (Benn; 9s. 6 d.), an anthology of Mar riage Proposals Grave and Gay. The compilers, Margaret Crosland and Patricia Ledward, have drawn from biography and fiction, poetry and the drama, collections of letters, anthropology. folklore. The result is a medley, but an amusing one, with here and there ...

... . By Myrtle Rose White. (Allen and L Inwin 8s. 6 d.) Another story from a farm, but this time it is a true one, though written more or less in the form of a novel. Mrs. White accompanied her husband to an outpost in South Australia which was fifty miles from a telephone and a hundred from the nearest doctor. She gives a straightforward account of her life as a wife and mother, and the reader ...

... . By Julian Symons, i| (Gollancz 8s. 6 d.) Mr. Julian Symons had a good idea when he decided to use the fantastic but true story of the T. J. Wise forgeries as the basis of j a detective novel. He expresses his debt to Messrs. Carter and Pollard's ingenious piece of literary detection, and while not attempting to follow their conclusions too closely, he makes the subject of faked first ...

... THE CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE. Cloak-and- dagger melodrama, with Tyrone Power and a fetching new girl, Jean Peters, about the Spaniards who signed on with Cortez for his expedition to the New World. Rampagious nonsense, but the bold movement and beautiful Mexican backgrounds may keep you interested, -s Films in Brief ...

... THAT WONDERFUL URGE.-- -Mr. Power aeain. with Gene Tierney, in the lightest of comedies about a reporter who pursues a society girl to discover if she is frigid, or just careful, and finds her to be neither. Excellent small parts, and some genuine laughs. ...

... MELODY TIME.-- -Another of Walt Disney's real-life and cartoon medleys, distressingly weak in invention and haphazardly flung together, but not without its lively moments. ...