VARIOUS NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 145, 16 December 1927, Page 5

VARIOUS NOVELS

SOME HOLIDAY. FICTION

LOVE, ADVENTURE, THRILLS

In "What "Women Fear," by Florence Riddell (London: Geoffrey Bles), the authoress takes as her theme the wife whose husband is considerably younger than she is. The heroine is a famous woman explorer, her husband being twelve years her junior. The inevitable happened: enter another lady with youth, beauty, and cunning to aid her. In East Africa the story is worked out, and the problem is solved satisfactorily to all, although in rather an unexpected manner. Domesticity and Romance.

Middle-aged, the wife of a worthless husband, and the mother of fivo children, Maggie Windram seemed to have been overlooked by Romance. But how it came into her life "The Blessed Roof-Tree" (London: Cassells) tells rather prettily, Alice Massie weaving a very readable tale out of somewhat unpromising material.

A Scots Love Story.

. "Sunlight and Salt," by Jean Oliver Riddell (London: Hodder and Stoughton) has a simple theme. Nancy Hepburn is the heroine of a story set in a typically Scotch setting, and not too much dialect. She is beloved by Robin Dalryniple, a stalwart young mau whose spinster cousin Ann is concerned in a plot to prevent him meeting a relative whose past threatens to sully the family name. However, the relative returns from America under an assumed name, and Robin meets-him without knowing the relationship. Ann is not seen in a pleasant light, but there are excuses for her, and all ends happily for Nancy and Robin. A charming tale.

Fighting The Biffs. "The Mocking Chevalier" (London: Hodder and Stoughton) is an excellent example of the breezy work of A. G. Hales. Terry Heathercot, for honour's sake, killed a man and had to flee from England. He chose Spain for a refuge, was landed at Santander by a friendly crew of Devon fishermen, aud then rode to Madrid, where he joined the Spanish Legion. Here Terry meets with men of all countries, Japanese, Australians, Germans, Danes, all serving under good King Alfonso and no questions asked. Vivid descriptions which Mr. Hales knows so well how to write are. given of life among the legionaries —and it is a rough hard life fighting the Bedouins in. their native desert and rough country. "The Daughter of the Spears" figures in the dramatic story, making eyes at the mocking chevalier, so the love element is duly provided for. "The Mocking Chevalier" is full of action from cover to cover.

Jeffrey Farnol's Latest. Quite in the Farnolian vein is **The Quest' of Youth" (London: Sampson Low). Sir Marmaduke Vane Temperley is the seeker. He has had a fairly long innings, for he is 45, but at that time of life he had but few illusions left. In fact, he is introduced as "bored to extinction with everything in general and himself in particular." All this was a hundred years ago or thereabouts. But for Sir Marmaduke there was a romance to come, even at 45, and it was brought to him in the person of the pretty Quakeress EveAnn Ash. Under very peculiar circumstances he met the girl just as she waa on the point of eloping with a soundrel. He saves the girl—from that, but when he subsequently finds her with a gun in her hand and a newly-dead man at her feet he thinks explanations must be made. They are; but then Bow Street runners are set to work and Sir Marmaduke and Eve-Ann have to run for it, too. The girl does not know who her knight and hero actually is, believing him to be plain John Hobbs. In the end she discovers his identity, and much mystery is cleared up and the reader is glad to be assured that once 'more the good triumphs over the bad and to hear the jangle of prospective w.edding bells.

Gold and Horrors. "The Golden Pool,' r by Austin Freeman, is a story of a forgotten mine. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd). Those who enjoy ' adventures, and appreciate descriptive work of a very high order will •thoroughly appreciate "The Golden Pool." Eichard Englefield. a young Englishman, whom an unlucky fate has set on a high stool in a bank, but who loves the sea, and to whom adventure is as the breath of life, comes across a fight in a small tavern in a seaport town. He befriends one of the actors, and is taken by him on board his ship, and that leads to his being taken on by Captain Bithery to manage and sell the cargo of oddments to native people in Quittah, Africa, as purser. He meets with Mr. Pereira and his beautiful daughter at Quittah, as well as with several other much less, desirable or interesting people. Chance leads Englefield to read a diary of Captain Barnabas Hogg, who writes o£ a mysterious tribe which had obtained, and' secreted immense quantities of gold dust. They were a very cruel people, and were in the habit of blinding any who came after the gold, then forcing them to work terribly hard in the getting of more of the valued metal, killing them with slow tortures when they had done with them. The story was both horrible and thrilling, and Englefield felt that he must make-i an endeavour to locate the gold if possible. The.interest is well sustained throughout, and the story is full of action.