Books: February Mysteries

Of last month's 22, the following stood out as best bets:

SOME BURIED CAESAR — Rex Stout—Farrar & Rinehart ($2). Attempted barbecue of a championship bull cooks the goose of two upState New Yorkers. Not expert-proof, but Nero Wolf's sleuthing and Archie Goodwin's cracks make it Rex Stout's best.

MURDER TO HOUNDS—Edward Acheson—Harcourt, Brace ($2). Murder in a neurotic fox-hunting Virginia family, combining an innocuous love story with the most engaging Englishman in recent crime fiction.

SOME DAY I'LL KILL You—Dana Chambers—Dial ($2). Murder and mayhem in the Connecticut countryside. Fast and witty, despite the somewhat Flash Gordon plot.

THE BIG SLEEP—Raymond Chandler—Knopf ($2). Detective Marlowe is plunged into a mess of murderers, thugs and psychopaths who make the characters of Dashiell Hammett and James Cain look like something out of Godey's Lady's Book.

THE CASE OF THE PERJURED PARROT—Erle Stanley Gardner — Morrow ($2). The "testimony" of a profane pet parrot figures in the coroner's hearing on the murder of an eccentric millionaire. Standard Perry Mason, slightly frayed at the edges.