Julian Symons has helped to increase the range and worth of crime fiction in many ways. For example, his crime novels, like Ross Macdonald's, combine ingenious plotting with psychological and social probing. In addition, he has a gift, like Nicolas Freeling, for wry humor and satire. However, the variety of his forms and techniques goes beyond that of any other crime writer. He has written conventional detective novels (Bland Beginning, Bogue's Fortune, The Belting Inheritance), a detective fiction parody (The Immaterial Murder Case), a political thriller (The Broken Penny), several psychological crime novels (The Man Who Killed Himself, The Man Whose Dreams Came True, etc.), some nightmarish portrayals of modern society (The Thirty-First of February, The Players and the Game, etc.), some acute social satires (The Plain Man, The End of Solomon Grundy), and a humorous novel about a contemporary incarnation of Sherlock Holmes (A Three-Pipe Problem). The...