924 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



yovemher i, lOiS 



courageously gathered togetlier. This 

 kind of thing requires to he very deli- 

 cately handled, or it is apt to be uncom- 

 monly depressing. Here tnere are no mis- 

 takes, and we are pleasantly tickled into 

 just the right kind of laughter on every 

 page. Perhaps it is a little l>old to issue 

 this pleasant but not very significant 

 trifle as a full-blown novel. But it is ex- 

 cellent holiday reading; and will make a 

 very jolly reprint. 



Hv George Edgar. (Mills 

 3s.' 6d.) 



Thp Med Colonel 

 and Boon, 



Mr. Edgar's new novel, by a piece of pro- 

 phetic providence, fell open in the hands 

 ■of the reviewer at the following passage : 

 " Waring was trying to reconcile the 

 four-fingered left liand of the Red Colonel 

 \»ith the print of the murderer's hand 

 upon the bloodstained banknote, and its 

 missing little finger." That occurs on 

 I)a(p;n 103. It is a generous promise of 

 wh it is to oome. It is also a very proper 

 situation to have reached after 102 des- 

 perately exciting pages. There are some 

 familiar characters in the story, in a way 

 the respectable man with a secret in 

 his past, the doctor in love with the step- 

 daughter of the respectable man, tne 

 great organisation of criminals, the jour- 

 nalist, and a few others. But they are 

 all trained by Mr. l<klgar in the way they 

 should go — the way of crime and detection 

 and breathlessness. He is full of sur- 

 [trises, too; we have not met a better 

 and more unusual sensational scene than 

 that in which the young doctor meets the 

 Red Colonel for the first time. Mr. Edgar 

 has written two excellent costume 

 romances, and shown himself an exi)ert 



a novelist of imagination. 



to beat the chroniclers of 



own ground. He does it. 



second of dullness in 

 One detail may be 



is the fortunate village in 

 thirteenth 



craftsman and 

 Now he is out 

 crime on their 

 There is not a 

 lietl Colonel." 

 tioned : where 



Huckiiighamshire in which 

 century cottages linger"? 



"The 

 men- 



The Lure of the TAftlc Drum. By Madge 

 Peterson. (Melrose, 3s. 6d.) 



There is no doubt about one feature in 

 tlie novel, judged to be the best in Messrs. 

 Melrose's recent prize competition. It is 

 a book no one can help reading. Every- 

 thing in it is interesting. The situations 

 nre interesting; a girl of unfortunate 

 origin and unstable character marries a 

 nice Englishman in India as a possible 

 escape from yielding to a bad Indian 

 Prince. She goes to the Prince none the 

 less, and he treat-s her horribly, and she 

 dies (but even the death is original in 

 plan and execution). The psychology is 

 interesting: everyone is different and 

 alive, and there are no flasliing heroes and 

 heroin(\s of melodrama, such as so strong 

 a plot might produce. The style is good ; 

 the details are natural. The only loose 

 «Mid we have di.scovered is the " drum " of 

 the title. Miss Peterson seemed to be 

 gping to use the native drum both actually 

 and symbolically, but after introducing it 

 as a wedding present she does no more 



with it. That is her only forced effect. 

 The great and outstanding merit of a re- 

 markable book is the absence of force ; 

 it has no false shadows or heightened high 

 lights. Miss Peterson ought to go very 

 far ; here is an unqualified success. 



The Secret Citadel. By Isabel C. Clarke. 

 (Hutchinson, 3s. 6d.) 



There are in this well-told story several 

 elements which, more adequately treated, 

 would have made it a really notable 

 novel instead of what it is, a very read- 

 able and interesting piece of fiction. It 

 is tlie account of a mixed marriage, be- 

 tween an at first very devoted agnostic 

 and a Roman Catholic girl of old family 

 and traditional faith. It would hardly 

 have been difficult for so skilful a writer 

 as Miss Clarke to show us something of 

 the husband's exasperation at the l)lank 

 wall of a Catholicism with which he had 

 no sympathy; the Roman faith, for non- 

 Romans, does unmistakably raise such 

 walls in everyday life. But Miss Clarke 

 merely makes the man yield to an intem- 

 perate French atheist ; his desi)erate love 

 for his wife fails before the meanest and 

 most paltry of .secularist attacks. But in 

 one element Miss Clarke triumphs; she 

 makes the reader feel and understand, 

 and not hate, the inevitable binding force 

 of Catholicism on its adherents. The plot, 

 as has been suLrg<>sted, is not too convinc- 

 ing. The husband is too nasty, and his 

 conversion at the conclusion is much more 

 necessary to a hapi)y ending than to any- 

 thing else in the book. 



Cnptnin Corbp<m\s Adxienfure. By Mrs. 

 Hugh Eraser and Hugh Eraser. 

 (Hutchinson, 2s. net.) 



Captain Corbeau's adventure must have 

 been exciting enough to himself (for it 

 was not one but manv adventures); and 

 it would I;e reasona^)ly exciting to a 

 reader who had never met with either 

 Dumas or Mr. Weyman, to name no other 

 novelist of the Cardinal school of romance. 

 To more critical persons the book must 

 seem decidedly thin. Corbeau. a sort of 

 pinckbeck D'Artagnan, married an un- 

 known lady by proxy (a union very casu- 

 ally dispo.sed of in the last few pages). 

 and then went to the country and fell 

 into several rather pointless scrapes. The 

 actual plot is so far-fet-ched that it ren- 

 ders the otherwi.se thrilling incidental 

 episodes unreal. There are some good 

 ideas in the book, but it is altogether too 

 cursorily put together and carelessly 

 finished. 



The Adxientnres of Mortimtr Dixon. By 

 Alicia Ramsey. (Paul, 3s. (kl.) 



Miss Ramsey's story is crammed with 

 thrilling adventures. Her hero is a young 

 journalist who is an ardent admirer of 

 his great Chief, who is suspiciously like 

 a notable Elect Street newspaper owner, 

 seen through idealistic spectacles. Morti- 

 mer Dixon is .sent out to discover the 

 whereabouts of a girl who had been ab- 

 ducted and whom the jjolice have failed 

 to find. Dixon rivals his Chief in men- 



