The Bat (by Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood) is 33 years olda bearded oldster among thrillers. But though it does its hissing through false teeth and glares from a glass eye, it is still strangely animatea good deal of a mess, but only now & then a bore.
In the era of The Bat, whodunits got elaborate trousseaux, so as to set up house-haunting in style: winding staircases, sliding panels, well-trained lightning and thunder, gashed faces, bloody hands, Japanese servants, hidden blueprints, missing banknotes; it was kill and conk, conk and kill. George Moore once snorted that in War...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
