Bring Forth the Body is the penultimate volume in Simon Raven's Alms For Oblivion series, but it stands quite easily on its own as a separate novel. In fact, there's maybe too much ease: Captain Detterling and Leonard Perceval conduct a quiet investigation into the causes of Somerset Lloyd-Jones's suicide, and the book is simply a series of false leads which finally wind around to revelation. The tone, in this roundup of characters from earlier novels, progressively darkens; and Raven invents an effortless stream of comic moments….

Peter Straub, "Hot & Cold," in New Statesman (© 1974 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 88, No. 2276, November 1, 1974, p. 627.∗