JOKER TAKES QUEEN

Mystery reviewers jade, we tell you. Jade. Jade. Jade. It's hardly been twenty reading years since we got off The Butler Did It bit. Now (if our British subscribers will kindly close their blooming eyes to our lapse) we look for the bloody cop. It's a good thing for authors and publishers that general readers don't jade at our great rate. For them, this will be a mildly entertaining mystery about a timid writer of strapping espionage books who rusticates in a tiny town for the sake of health and nerves only to have the place go barmy with bodies. But it's ruining our touching faith in the bobbies.