Judge — June 7, 1930 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What's the idea of the revolving door on our little tent?” “Well, if we have as many of your friends and relatives down here “Poor Smith is gone. “Gang feud?” He was taken for a ride last night “Nope! His wife was driving!” 4 ” JUDGING“ BOOKS sa, £ flossy crimes make me sick,” Sergeant Heath on the scene of Philo Vance's latest pink spasm, “The Scarab Murder Ca and thereby speaks a mouthful. For this would be the kest of the usua clegant and exhibitionistie Mr. S. S. Van Dine's murder fairy stories, and we say it with the sneaking suspicion we are letting an old favorite down with a horrible clunk, First, it took no ingenuity to solve the crime—my little stepdaughter could do it in the dark with her ¢ closed. Second, it dragged like rond Avenue street- car and ran together into a kind of sluggish pool of characters, actions and motives. Third, such characters pout had none of the life- Mr. Van Dine ordinarily ps into them, such as, frinst, the uineness of the evil psychiatrist in “The Canary Case.” Fourth, when Mr. Van Dine tried to ery “Boo,” what with pools of blood, the “subtle Egyptian Hani, the nec mosphere 5 mummy s tal” nish and other flossy trappings, we, like our old pal Tolstoi, weren't afraid. Fifth, Philo sounded very tired in his snoopings, his sight translations of hieroglyphics and his glib makin’ w. tology reading like a memor son. We'll up some new blood before his next, “The Autumn Murder C. and if he doesn’t decide on what sex he’s going, we'll have to retire him to some nice, quict pansy bed, let him go to seed and then see that a heavy frost de- scends on his awfly, awfly activities. to pick Although Mr. Hazard’s “Hacking New York” is sct down in that par- ticular unimaginative style peculiar to ship logs, there are some rather inter- esting spots here and there, unclut- tered by latitudinal and longitud data. If you care about knowing the and wherefores of hacking from its earliest Gotham days, hop to it. The grisly details of the awful com- petition among the big operators readily enough suggest an answer to that moot question of why cabbies sel- dom have change for a fin, It would be hardly unfair to put Danny Ahearn on the literary spot for his modest little autobiographical me- anderings from one crime to another in “How to Commit a Murder.” It's a dandy beginner’s handbook which, if studied faithfully, will enable the young idea to pay his way through the college of crime. So it seems to be up to Mr. Ahearn to trundle out some of those big shots who have comicbooks.com