BIG SHOT

by Lawrence Treat '24.Harper & Brothers, 1951. 250 PP., $2.50

Lawrence Treat, with this, his thirteenth novel, is now a practiced and most competent hand in writing readable and exciting murder stories. His detail and background is unusually authentic and Big Shot is one of Mr. Treat's best books.

Mitch Taylor, his hero, is a most likeable cop, and is not above taking an honest bribe which makes him unlike most detective heroes who are always without fear, and above reproach. After all his salary is small, and his wife Amy certainly deserves the best.

The story is reasonably complicated, and the main villain, Big Shot, falls a victim to Mitch's astuteness on the very last page.

My own guess would be that the "Big Shot" ultimately beats the rap, because he has lots of money, and there are many murderers walking the streets who have killed with impunity (read about the Senate's investigation of Big Crime in the United States), because their money gives them freedom even in a so-called murder rap.

If Mr. Treat wants to make the reader entirely happy, he should follow Chandler, and others, who simply strew their books with dead crooks. A dead crook at the end of the story gives the "escape reader" more satisfaction than one who gets off with a suspended sentence, a $500 fine, or who is acquitted and takes the Judge on a cruise to Nassau on his private yacht.