[Creasey's books about George Gideon of Scotland Yard written under the J. J. Marric pseudonym] are marked by the technically dazzling handling of a large number of plots in small compass—in [the case of "Gideon's Fire"], arson, child-rape, murder, domestic and financial fraud, to name only the most prominent—each of them developed as fully as the average crime writer could do in a single-minded novel.

They are further distinguished by the facts that the crimes involved have a solid real-life plausibility, that Gideon himself is an interesting and believable man, and that the author has a good novelist's acute understanding of the small interplays of character and personality, whether the relationship be between a detective and his superior officer, or a widow and her half-perceptive, half-callous child. All of the Creasey avatars are skilled at telling an exciting story; Marric, in addition, can write—and he's...