THE BLUNDERER

A second suspense story has much of the malevolent intensity of Strangers On A Train and the whim of circumstance does much to victimize Walter Stackhouse, a lawyer. A newspaper clipping of an unsolved murder of a Mrs. Kimmel obsesses him with the possibility of her husband's guilt, and is at the back of his mind when he follows his own wife (whom he dislikes) who is to meet her death in a parallel situation. The police make a natural affiliation of the two crimes; Kimmel, his equanimity shaken, is now a vengeful man; and Walter, deserted by his friends and disbelieved by the police, is both the blunderer and the killer's butt. Clever.