Murder in October

NEVER COME BACK--John Nair--Little, Brown ($2.50). After throttling his leman, a London hack writer discovers she possessed the secret code of a traitorous political organization. His immoral cunning helps him quench the national danger and save his own skin after more murders, torture, Buchanesque chases and all-round wickedness. A thoroughly unprincipled, exciting, ably written tale.

THE NAVY COLT--Frank Gruber--Farrar & Rinehart ($2). The penniless book agents, Cragg & Fletcher, are linked to the shooting of a Chicago wastrel who owns a museum-piece Colt once toted by Jesse James. Solution of the gun's secret and two murders finds these extraordinary amateur hawkshaws at their best.

EVIL UNDER THE SUN -- Agatha Christie--Dodd, Mead ($2). Hercule Poirot's little grey cells function on the implausibly executed but beautifully elucidated murder of a blonde siren at a British summer resort. Not Christie's best, but better than most.

THE CASE OF THE EMPTY TIN--Erie Stanley Gardner--Morrow ($2). A code scratched on a tin can in the dusty corner of a California cellar gives Perry Mason his first clue in a case of double murder. Departs in many ways from the familiar Mason formula--and is much the better for it.

THE CORPSE IN THE SNOWMAN--Nicholas Blake--Harper ($2). A girl dies at an English house party that includes a trollop, a squire, an American wife, a rolling stone, a fribble, a quack. Detective Nigel Strangeways is baffled right up to the tantalizing conclusion. Grim and pathological, but a grand job.

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