Murder in July

TINSLEY'S BONES -- Percival Wilde --Random House ($2). The incineration of an eremitical pulpwriter in his rural Connecticut retreat causes the convocation of an amazing coroner's jury. The testimony presented, the diary of one juror with an unfortunate flair for amateur detection, and the sly sleuthing of Coroner Slocum make up the year's most intelligently hilarious mystery yarn.

No COFFIN FOR THE CORPSE--Clayfon Rawson--Little, Brown & Co. ($2). A rich spiritualism devotee sees the ghost of a blackmailer he slugged and buried, and is later himself found slain in the locked and weaponless room of a Mamaroneck mansion. Merlini, an ex-magician with a vast fund of illusionistic lore and rare deductive skill, enters the case to help a much-involved reporter friend and remains to produce a subtle and unsuspected slayer. Superabundant--and engrossing-- data about spirits, fakirs and magic slightly retard the movement of an otherwise excellent story.

FOLIO ON FLORENCE WHITE--Will Oursler--Simon & Schuster ($2). The girl secretary of a Manhattan aircraft executive, having done time on a framed-up theft charge, is accused of killing her ex-office mate. Two keen lawyers take up cudgels for her, unearth another and very grisly murder, and by swift thinking and quick action bring the well-tangled plot to a satisfactory solution.

For readers who like their murder in large doses: The Complete Dashiell Hammett (Knopf; $2.50), five full-length novels beginning with The Thin Man, proving pretty conclusively that the worst of Hammett is several parasangs ahead of his closest runners-up in the tough school; Three Famous Spy Novels (Random; $1.98), showing how dated E. P. Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation seems in the company of Eric Ambler's streamlined Journey into Fear and the sinister subtleties of Graham Greene's The Confidential Agent.

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