LATEST FICTION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 21

LATEST FICTION

A breezy, intriguing tale of the old privateering, buccaneering days of the New England Colonies, "The Sea Panther" (Cassell and Co., Ltd.), by Raymond M'Farland, author of "Sons of the Sea" and "Skipper John of the Nimbus," holds the close attention of the. reader from start to finish. The characters are well drawn; the story is full of, adventure, action, and hairbreadth escapes; the mystery as'to the identity of "Black Harry," the redoubtable pirate, is maintained to the very end; the romantic interest is well sustained, and the story of tho stern, dramatic, and successful fight made by tho New England colonists against tho attempt of Louis XIV. of Franco, "Le Eoi Soleil,'* to dominate tho 'North American Continent and drive out the hated British, is exceedingly well told.

Betty Inskip, in "The Ravelled Sleeve-" (London: Hodder and Stoughtou), follows a, modern schoolgirl through homo and school lifo quite pleasantly, but with somewhat moticulous detail. Dinah and Elizabeth, two sisters, Flavia, a school friend, Bonnie, who is Lord Carriek later in tho story, all these characters aro pleasantly described, with their amusements, and later their love affairs. The novel lacks definite incident or plot, but at the same time has interest as an account of decent modern young people who, though "ladies and gentlemen," are not of the "smart set," who smoke, drink, and defy all the conventions and decencies of life.

"High- Speed," by ClintonH. Stagg (London: Bichards, Ltd.), will appeal to speed maniacs, the popular heroes to-day. Billy Briee lives in an atmosphere of stale oil, petrol fumes, and hot metal, and he romps triumphantly through all the probabilities to win an international track trophy. Clinton 11. Stagg'3 story glorifies some of the mechanised inanities of modernism. Track trickeries and a little love festoon a comet-like narrative. The excitement is intense, and the last chapter, told almost entirely in the gibbering ejaculations of spectators, moved to tho limits of 'human endurance in thrills, is a triubut'e to the worship of speed in America.