Stories Of Adventure

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

Stories Of Adventure

SYDNEY PARKMAN has knocked round the world a bit, and that he made good use of his powers of observation he has proved in half a dozen brightly-written stories of adventure, nowhere better than in his last volume, "The Facts About Floyd" (Hodder and Stoughton).

He begins his story in London, but quickly swings it across to Brisbane and then up the coast of Queensland and across to the Solomons. The voyage in a tiny schooner is splendidly described and adventures fall thick and fast, but naturally enough he gets there. Bill Brent was his name, and he was a hnrd-up newspaperman (is that tautological?) whose claim to fame was that he had shaken an interview out of the publicity shunning Atlantic flyer, Margaret Freushaw. when all the rest of Fleet Street had fallen down on the job. Just after that fateful interview tin-hard-hitting William learned that he was the heir to a big fortune left by his uncle if he could prove that his relative had out livid hia foster son Floyd, a scientist who had gone on a cruise of investigation to the Pacific, and had not returned. So off he went down the long leagues to Brisbane by luxury liner and up _to the hot and wet Solomons in a 2!!0-ton sailer to find out the facts about Floy*. And here in the islands he finds Margaret again, forced down by a hurricane when trying to outdo Amelia Earhart. and held prisoner of a. mad scientist, perhaps Floyd, perhaps not. The adventures whi/.i befall Bill and his method and manner of overcoming danger and doubt form very entertaining reading.