THE ROSE BATH RIDDLE
By Rud '14. Macaulay Company, New York.
Sherlock Holmes in the modern world must have more than a powerful intensity of observation. He must also have a specialized knowledge of such esoteric subjects as the effects of mollusks on hay fever, machinery for grinding diamonds, and the obfuscation of the intensity of the Northern Lights by star dust.
Jigger Masters, the detective in The RoseBath Riddle by Anthony Rud, has spent his spare time so well that he is able to solve a mystery which is more than mysteriously mysterious. And it is that a man, Simon Corlaes, in excellent health stepped into a shower bath in his own home, turned on the hot water, and was killed there in less than thirty seconds and that in this brief passage of time his body was literallyfrozen to death.
But Jigger Masters in the course of the 250 odd pages must work his agile mind with other peculiar phenomena, like the forging of a check for $10,000, the pawning of a blush pearl necklace for $8,000, the braining of a man with a sand-loaded sock, the stabbing of a man with a spear file and the forcible insertion of him into a fume-hooded vat, the poisoning of a dancer's rouge (which elevated the toes of the mother of the girl by mistake), and the snuffing out of a chauffeur in a garage. If that seems a bit brutal, you will get the delicate touch of criminal genius when you discover that the murderer to avoid suspicion injected into his own arm a tiny dose of a powerful drug called aconitine, a vegetable alkaloid which depresses the heart action and dilates the blood vessels. But the nicest sleuthing of all is how Private Dective Jigger Masters solved the fantastic episode in the rose bath cabinet when a man who thought that he would luxuriate in Amazon warmth of bathroom steam was frozen as stiff as Arctic blubber.
You may like lots of action with your murders, and you will find yourself well treated in this book. An interesting difference from other similar novels is that the detective, nothing short of a genius at solving unique crimes, is unable to prevent them happening every ten minutes or so despite his presence on the scene and his .forebodings. Indeed he himself is nearly disposed of by the murderer before he can make his scientific exegesis to a bewildered audience, for the murderer after drinking cyanide, a poison that desposes of a man in fifteen seconds in convulsions that seem fifteen centures, begins screaming and firing his revolver. The table kindly takes the bullet intended for Detective Masters, who then leaps on the murderer "in a long, smashing tackle" after which come convulsions and death.
Museums Thrive in the Depression by Russell Newcomb '26 appears in the August number of the American Mercury.
The Marriage Panacea by Ernest R. Groves '03 has been reprinted from SocialForces for March 1934. Lippincott Company has just published The AmericanFamily by Professor Groves. Some of the material in this book has been taken from Professor Groves' previous work SocialProblems of the Family.
Edwin O. Grover '94 is the author of an article The Fun of Professing Books reprinted from the English Journal (College edition) April, 1934.
The Cumulative Penalty by Fred C. Scribner Jr. 'go appears in the January issue of the Boston University Law Review.
Government, Business and the Depression in the United States by Prof. Leonard D. White 'l4 has been reprinted from laRevue Internationale des Sciences Administratives for 1934. Prof. White with John M. Gaus is also the author of Public Administration in the United Stales in 1933 which appeared in the June number of the American Political Science Review
Earth, Radio, and Stars by Harland True Stetson, who received his Master's degree at Dartmouth in 1910, has just been published by Whittelsey House.
Maurice Whittinghill '3l, and A. Franklin Shull are the authors of Crossovers inMale Drosophila Melanogaster Induced byHeat which appears in Science for July, 1934-
Sydney A. Clark 'l2 is the author of College Tours of Europe in August Travel.
The first number of Yankee Poetry Chapbook (Summer, 1934) contains a poem Outof Bones Arise Beliefs by Kimball Flaccus '33. Mr. Flaccus also has a poem in the July issue of Scribners entitled Elizabeth.
Dr. W. Beran Wolfe '21 has an article entitled Nerves which appears in the RedBook for June.
Charles N. Proctor '29 is the author of Ski Trails and Their Design which appears in the June issue of Appalachia.
Glacial Marginal Shores and the MarineLimit in Massachusetts by Irving B. Crosby and Richard J. Lougee '27 appears in the June issue of the Bulletin of the GeologicalSociety of America.
Recent articles by Dr. Edmund P. Fowler Jr. '26 are Suppurations of the PetrousTip reprinted from The Journal of theAmerican Medical Association for May, 1934, and Otosclerosis in Ultraviolet Light reprinted from the Annals of Otology,Rhinology and Laryngology for June, 1934.
William H. Taylor '23 is the author of a brief article Yankee—New England's DarkSea—Horse in the July 28 issue of the Literary Digest.
The autumn issue of the AmericanScholar contains an article The Need ofSophistication in Ethics by Professor Albert R. Chandler 'OB.
