THE BOOKSHELF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF.

NEWS AND REVIEWS.

NOTABLE NOVELS.

THE NEW WALPOLE,

On page one "Cyrano" reviews the fourth and last volume of the "Bulow Memoirs."

It is now no use telling fairy stories to a child. The reason is that all those extraordinary fairy tales told us in our ehilclhood are capable of fulfilment at the present moment. —Lord Londonderry.

As a nation, we are like a man who has a powerful motor car but has only the vaguest idea of how to drive it and no notion at all of where he wants to go. The Dean of Exeter.

The tyranny of rich old age over youth is a fruitful theme for the novelist. Francis Beeding lias used it to write a grim story of murder. The relatives of a wealthy old widow in London have to meet every year for dinner at her house This time she is too ill to attend. At the dinner table the talk turns on murder, and this is reported to the old lady by her companion. Next morning the urisober young man who started the conversation is found dead. His death is put down to accident, and so is the end of a second member of the party. The liero, a young doctor, is arrested for attempted murder, and there is some highly painstaking detective work leading up to his clearance. "Murder Intended" (Hodder and Stoughton) is a clever study of a mind unbalanced by miserliness and hatred, written by a novelist who has an Unusual talent for plot and considerable ability in creating atmosphere. We missed, however, the gaiety and beauty that brushed the 6kirte of death in' "Taking It Crooked," the story before this.