A TALE OF THE TURF

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 19

A TALE OF THE TURF

"Th« Money Lender- Intervenes." By „H. Noel Williams. London: Cecil Palmer.

Mr. Williams is qualifying ipr the mantis that fell from the most popular of modern sporting novelists, Nat Gould, and he looks a« if he will wear it. His other stories, "Tainted Gold," and "The Grasshampton Stable," are redolent of the turf as ia the story under review. -Mr. Williams does not write for highbrow readers; he is frankly out to amuse, entertain, and interest his readers, who are fonder.of nothing so much as a tale in which'horse racing is the chief feature. ' He uses'the ''love ingredient' rather sparingly; in a,literary sense he cuts the cackle and comes to the osses." The money-lender in this cass 15 none of - your' cent-per-ce'nt Shylocks but ;- an ( old!- : Malburian, a bambridge- man,- winner of a "Rugger,.: Blue," .and" a sec-ond-class law tripos; and, besides, he only charges 40-per\cent., and. thereby incurs the «mnity of competing usurers. Allthat is part.of the story. The'reader is taken to San Remo, Monte ■ Carlo Fans, and mixes with gay people all the time, some of them living on cardsharping walking in.very crooked ways of industry. There is a clearly-defined plot ill the novel, and it is warmly commended as. a companion on a monotonous tram journey or for reading- by the fireside on a miserable night outdoors