"Mr. Julian Symons, in this concise and beguiling retrospective view of the British detective story, divides his subject into 'The Begetters', 'Sherlock Holmes', 'The Great Detective', 'Fair Play and the Revolt against It', and, towards the end of his survey, he introduces a monitory note under the heading 'The Weakening Form'. Mr. Symons's select bibliography includes most of the greater writers in the genre, but he has modestly refrained from emphasising his own works such as The Colour of Murder and The Progress of a Crime, which received awards as the best crime novels of 1957 and 1960 respectively. Mr. Symons has also written on the General Strike of 1926, on the Thirties and on that astonishing figure Horatio Bottomley."