A serious literary artist, C. H. B. Kitchin longed for but never received popular acclaim--perhaps because of his novels' biting wit or, as his friend L. P. Hartley suggested, because Kitchin's four detective novels diverted most readers' attention from his more ambitious and more literary endeavors. Kitchin's early novels have an element of the fantastic which has led critics to compare them to Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow (1921) and L. H. Myers's The Clio (1925). His later books became more and more conventional; some critics maintain that in the process Kitchin became a better novelist, while others believe that he lost his individuality and became simply one good novelist among many. Less controversial is the view that Kitchin gradually evolved an attitude toward life which Francis King has likened to that "of an explorer in a diving bell. Insulated by both his wealth and his shyness, he seems to perceive...