Mr. Symons is always an enjoyably sly and deceiving writer, and he has seldom been trickier than in [The Plot Against Roger Rider]…. It is not, however, among his better stories. He has seldom been so diffuse or so labored, and he has never been so tediously generous with unnecessary characters and unfinished subplots. It must also be said that although he gives us a plentitude of bloody murders, nothing much seems to happen.

A review of "The Plot against Roger Rider," in The New Yorker, Vol. XLIX, No. 42, December 10, 1973, p. 200.