Reviews

• This novel was the winner of the 1968 Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writer's Association and also goes by the alternative title, 'A Glass-Sided Ants Nest'. The last remnant of the New Guinea 'Ku' tribe have moved to a large house in London under the auspices of their benefactor, an anthropologist called Dr Eve Ku. The tribal leader Aaron is bludgeoned to death on the stairwell and Inspector Jimmy Pibble investigates this 'kinky little case'. Is the killer in-house or a victim of local racists? Dr Eve seems to regard the twenty strong colony of Ku as 'her own private stamp collection' providing fodder for her professional writings and research; hence the alternative book title. For such a short read there are several jolting style changes; stream of conciousness, characters thinking aloud, annoying verbal tics from Pibble( uttering 'Crippen!'), a fully printed copy of a medical report and several time-shifts between modern day and a Japanese WW2 attack on the Ku homeland. The novel felt like it was written by a Cambridge Natural Science graduate in their year off to try and get cash together. It seemed like the idea for a school science project. This was Mr Dickinson's first novel and the beginning of a short series involving Pibble. I dread to think what the competitors were like in 1968.

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