THURSDAY'S BLADE,

By Frederick C. Davis'28. The Crime Club; 1947; 250 pp.; $2.00.

Many readers of Mr. Davis's He Wouldn'tStay Dead will recall with pleasure the strange quartet of investigators who appeared in that novel: Cyrus Hatch, the hard-fisted psychology professor, Cy's hard-headed secretary Jane (obviously his future wife), his cookbodyguard Dannv (whom loves elegant grammar), and his father Mark Hatch, the police commissioner. These four re-appear in Thursday's Blade, seeking to identify a murderer apparently determined to use a complete set of old-fashioned cut throat razors, one every day for a week, on selected victims. Among the persons involved are an astonishingly masterful female, Sibella Melborne, internationally famous radio commentator, who is convinced that her husband is a murderer and who means to tell the world so on the airwaves at a suitably dramatic time. Sibella's husband gathers around him a group of friends, convinced of his innocence despite his unfortunate tendencies to tell lies to everybody and to leave unusual articles in the apartments of disreputable young women who have just been slain. Confusion, extra murders, and very odd characters add fresh elements to the general embroglio. Mr. Davis has produced a well-constructed, lively, entertaining mystery, and the formidable Sibella is a sybil no reader can forget.