NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24365, 18 September 1944, Page 4

NEW NOVELS

DOCKYARD Job in the North. By Gordon Jeffery. Gollancz. 253 pp. Mr Graves in his novel of the Royal Armoured Corps, Mr Mallalieu in his novel of the Murmansk convoys, have each used fiction to show readers one side of the war effort. Mr Jeffery takes a third—the work of a naval dockyard where,, as a battle-cruiser is modernised, the material, technical, executive, political, social, and personal problems to be solved are methodically illustrated. Methodically is not a word of tepid praise; the merit of Mr Jeffery’s book is that his method and his truthfulness can’t be separated. COMEDY Fresh Heir. By Joan Butler. Stanley Paul. 192 pp. Through Whltcombe and Tombs Ltd. Spriiig Manoeuvres. By Hamilton Grieve. Robert Hale Ltd. 235 pp. Through Whltcombe and Tombs Ltd. Since Mr Wodehouse went in for broadcasting messages of comfort to his friends and Mr Travers retired from fiction. Miss Butler has had things pretty well her own way in the farcical sort. In a free-for-all competition for the fortune of the octogenarian ogre,» John Marchmant Haw. his solicitor, Freddie Martin, with inexhaustible wit and physical resource, keeps ahead of the dirty players and pulls the charming Patricia out of the game as his own prize. Mr Grieve is a New Zealand rival of Miss Butler’s, and not an insignificant one. The wild-cat business venture of an unbusinesslike man and the milder adventures of his daughter in love give an antic plot its loose-shape and Mr Grieve his full liberty to make fun of the press, commercial broadcasting, and even the Woolston tram.