THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


CLIFFORD WITTING – Silence After Dinner. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1953. No US edition?

   A clergyman committed two murders — one perhaps justified, one definitely not — in China in 1947. That clergyman is now in England and involved with the village of Yateham.

   But there are three, one of them defrocked, who are connected in one way or another with the village. Which one is the killer? And which one murders one of the others? Or was the murderer possibly the young baronet, protecting the reputation of his betrothed?

   Witting is obviously not an admirer of churchmen; none of them, including the retired rector of Yateham, is a wholly admirable character. Despite the solution not being fair play, the novel is entertaining and well worth reading.

— From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 12, No. 3, Summer 1990.