Books: Too Much Mustard

THIRTEEN MEN—Tiffany Thayer— Claude Kendall ($2.50).

Most murder-story writers content themselves with two or three violent deaths in one book. Not so Author Thayer: his hero kills 39 people. But Thirteen Men is not a detective story, for the murders are all committed and solved in the first chapter. The rest of the book takes up the life-story of each of the twelve jurors in the murder trial, starting with each man’s birth and ending with his opening the mailed summons for jury duty. It is a varied panel: an Irish contractor, a Greek restaurant proprietor, a commercial artist, an Italian grocer, the manager of a carburetor factory, a millionaire, a German shopkeeper, a certified public accountant, a garage owner, a Jewish garment-manufacturer, an ex-soldier, a failure. The last chapter tells about the killer, his preposterous motive for his preposterous crimes, what these twelve men voted to do with him. Author Thayer has saved his case histories from being boring by his brisk narration, his breezy bits of salaciousness; the sexual life of his jurymen is as varied as their nationalities, and their author tells much. Illustrator Mahlon Blaine helps him to the best of his ability.