TRIAL AND TERROR,

by Lawrence Treat'24. Morrow, 1949. 248pp. $2.50.

According to the list printed opposite the title page, this book is the twelfth mystery novel produced by Mr. Treat. In some of his earlier books (O as in Omen, V as in Victory) the interest depended primarily on an unusual or freakish method of detecting a crime: but in his three latest novels (Fas in Flight.Over the Edge, and Trial and Terror) the chief interest is derived from peculiarities in the characters of the guilty or suspected prisons. The present reviewer considers I his change (or trend) an improvement. Perhaps the "heroine" of Fas in Flight was a rather tedious enigma; but in Over the Edge and Trial and Terror the leading personalities are essentially interesting and vividly drawn. The mystery of "whodunit" is gradually solved, not so much by mechanical sleuthing as by the unveiling of the characters who had the greatest psychological propensity to commit the crime or misdeed in question. Furthermore, in Trial and Terror, the most puzzling and intriguing problem is not the identity of the murderer but a complicated esthetic riddle: whether a certain painting is a forgery, and, if so, how it can have been forged. Mr. Treat adroitly handles the devices of doubt, suspense, and revelation, so that a reader is very unlikely to lose interest in the characters or in the course of events, or to foresee the outcome, or to feel disappointed or tricked by the last surprising twist.