SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3179, 1 September 1917, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION

"Joan Avenel." < "Joan Avenel," by Dora S. Forgan (Fisher Unwin's First Novel Library) is a war story, its scenes, however, not laid at the front, but in a quiet English country town. The heroino is the young wife of an olderly lawyer, a preoiso and pragmatical person, more than double his wife's age. The war breaks out, and in due course thero is "billeted" on tho Avenel household a hand6omo young officer, whose tastes and habit of m'iud are much more in accord-

anco with those of the young wifo than her elde.ily hubby. The- youug people i'all in iovo, and for a timo Joan is beset by tho sadly conflicting elements of love and wifely allegiance. She emerges.from the conllict still true to a husband she respects blit has novor really loved, but the elderly husband meots with an accident, which eventually proves fatal, and when the handsome young officer returns from the front—well, my readcrt; can guess what happens. There is n pleasant subsidiary lovo story, and tho little world of a country town in war timo is cleverly sketched. A pleasant, wholesome, if not specially notaule story, decidedly promising as a first essay in fiction.

"The Hampstead Mystery." Sneer as may tho Superior Person at the vogue of the "detective" story, there is no gainsaying that the popularity of this class of fiction seems to be permanently established. ; Tho reason is no doubt that in most readers' minds there is a warm corner i'or ; u "mystery," and u well-told "detective" comes as a perfect boon to war-weary and worried people, who, in normal times, might desire and seek pleasure in more intellectual literary delights. To such I can "warmly commend "The Hftnipstead Mystery," by Messrs. Watson and Kees (London; John Lane), which deals with the mysterious murder of a judge and tho efforts of two Scotland Vard detectives, plus 'those of an expert "crime investigator" of the Sherlock Holmes type, to discover the criminal. The authors display more than the usual ingenuity of writers of this class of fiction in putting tho reader "off the track," and "Liber" himself must confess to having been hopelessly befogged. There is a woman, indeed, several women, "in the case," and a peculiarly sensational outcome of the murder is the placing of n leading barrister in the dock, a barrister who had already unsuccessfully defended a man charged with tho crime. A very neatly concealed' and cleverly elaborated story is "The Hampstead Mystery."

Mrs. Vernon's Daughter. It is decidedly hard on pretty Damaris Vernon, tho heroine -'of Lady Trowbridge's latest story, "Mrs. Vernon's Daughter" (London, Methuen and Co.), that she has to face the fact that hear mother, whom sho has worshipped as tho best, tho wisest, and most successful of her sex, has feet of clay, that the famous.Mrs. Vernon is not a great actress,, and, what is worse, that she is a lady with a particularly lurid past, whom society, for very good reasons, refuses hv receive. When, therefore, Maliso Denneyhani, a young officer of aristocratic family, falls in love and wishes to marry the girl, his relatives are duly horrified, and poor Damaris has to tread a long and dreary path of trouble.and downright sorrow before a kindly late sots everything right in tho last chapter. Lady Trowbridge has a light, agreeable touch, and her story makes pleasant, if not unduly exciting, reading.