DEATH AND THE DUTCH UNCLE

Superintendent Henry Tibbett is by now (Down Among the Dead Men, Dead Men Don't Ski) an old familiar regular out of Scotland Yard, but the method dates back to the late '20's and early '30's in mystery construction. Tibbett has too many lucky contacts for credibility and at the end, the characters all sit around and tell you what happened in a post-solution confrontation with an agonizingly involuted plot that this time saves an obscure Dutch statesman from a gang of assorted villains after mineral rights in Africa. Ho hum out of London and Amsterdam.