SKIT ON HEROINES

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1932, Page 19

SKIT ON HEROINES

This is how P. G. Wodehouso in •Lduder and. Funnier" derides'the lack of intelligence in the heroine of the ordinary sensational novel:— ■ '/Though beautiful, with, large grey eyes and hair the colour of ripe com, the heroine of the thriller is almost never a : very intelligent girl. ■ -Indeed, it would scarcely be overstating it to say, that her., mentality is that of a cockroach—and not an ordinary''cockroach at that, but one which has been dropped, on its head as a baby. "She, may have escaped death a dozen.times.. She may..know perfectly well that the notorious Blackbird Gang is after her. to secure the papers.. The police may have warned her on no aceount.ta stir outside her.House. But when a messenger cab... at half paat 2 in the morning with an unsigned note saying 'Come at once,' she just snatches at her hat and, goes, : "Tho^ messenger is a one-eyed Chiaaman with a pock-marked face and an evil .grin, so she trusts him immediately, and, haying accompanied him to the closed car with, steel shutters over the windows, bowls off in it to the ruined cottage in the .swamp. And when the hero, at great risk and inconvonionco to himself, comes to rescue her she will have nothing to do with him because she has been told by a mulatto^with half a/ nose that it was he who murdered her brother Jim."