CRIME AT CHRISTMAS

''There we were, all gathered together for a Christmas party, and plunged suddenly into gloom.'' It''s Christmas at Hampstead''s Beresford Lodge. A group of relatives and intimate friends gather to celebrate the festive season, but their party is rudely interrupted by a violent death. It isn''t long before a second body is discovered. Can the murderer be one of those in the great house? The stockbroker sleuth Malcolm Warren investigates, in this brilliantly witty mystery. "Kitchin''s knowledge of the crevices of human nature lifts his crime fiction out of the category of puzzledom and into the realm of the detective novel. He was, in short, ahead of his day." (H R F Keating).