With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying method of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of the traditional novel. The detective story is probably the most respectful (at any in the narrow sense of word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of University dons, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Fatalities may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, which is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizable human and consistent as our less intimate associates. As story set in a more remote environment, African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably authentic back-ground. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modern intellectual critics and creators of significant novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from Real Life nagging gently, we secretly delight in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human detective, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent. Though its villain also receives his rightful deserts, the thriller presents a less comfortable and credible world. The sequence of fist fights, revolver duels, car crashes and escaped from gas-filled cellars exhausts the reader far more than the hero, who, suffering from at least two broken ribs, one black eye, uncountable bruises and a hangover, can still chase and overpower an armed villain with the physique of a wrestler. He moves dangerously through a world of merciless gangs, brutality, a vicious lust for power and money and, in contrast to the detective tale, with a great criminal whose defeat seems almost accidental. Perhaps we miss in the thriller the security of being safely led by our calm investigator past a score of red herrings and blind avenues to a final gathering of suspects when an unchallengeable explanation of all that has bewildered us is given justice and goodness prevail. All that we vainly hope for from life is granted vicariously.