Hutt Library News

Hutt News, Volume 11, Issue 13, 25 August 1937, Page 5

Hutt Library News

This week the Lower Hutt Municipal Library has added to its shelves a large number o,f the lighter romances and adventure books. Arthur Aplin in his new book,' "Sweeter than Honey," has very cunningly put old wine-into a new bottle; and his wine sparkles and has a delightful bouquet of romance. This author's happiest hunting ground has always been the stage and the turf, but in "Sweeter Than Honey" he ) ■-- created a crook who bears .. semblance at all to the type which Hollywood has exploited with such tiresome regularity. Whether everyone will approve of the charming old apiarist and his fascinating daughter remains to be seen; but no one who reads the story can fail to be intrigued •and excited. , Again Mr. Charteris delights us with more exploits of "The Saint." This time poor Detective Teal "s again led up the garden path by this Robin Hood of modern crime. Simon Templar, the brighter buccaneer, comes back in this seventeenth volume of h'.s adventures to resume his career of b: iting the law and plaguing the ungodly with all his old blithe audacity. It sometimes seemed to Chief Inspector Teal that all the grief - , and misfortunes that had afflicted i.im in recent years "could be directly t aced to that incredible outlaw who w;.s called the Saint (for no good reason that Mr. Teal could ever see) who had' danced so long and so derisively just beyond his official reach, bringing down r.pou hint the not entirely justified censure of his superiors and, setting him more insoluble problems than it was fair to ask any man to tackle. But Mr. Teal has no hope that this state of affairs would ever change; and in this book will be found sonic of his reasons. "Dead Men Leading," by V. S. Pritchett, is an adventurous travel book of quite a new style. Its object is to •trace the true psychological history of an expedition, to .-how it .as the journey of three lives each bound in different ways with the life of one woman in England, and- to analyse the obscure motives of the explorer character with its passion for solitude ami the arduous its pursuit of the insurmountable difficulty, and its flight',from what most of us would call normal life. The story is one of both excitement and suspense, and conies to a dramatic climax in the Brazilian wilderness. Three Englishmen, one of them the son of a missionary who fifteen years before had disappeared in the Amazon jungle, another an experienced traveller and a third a newspaper re-porter, leave England on an expedition into the heart of Brazil. A 'conflict which had begun in England in the life of the missionary's son comes to a climax on the Amazon and disrupts the party, sending the soa on a search for the exact fate of his father. For those why love to travel with their .minds, though debarred from doing so in reality, will thoroughly enjoy this interesting book.

A very different type of book is K. H. Mottram's "Time T.) Be Going.'' This is a book for flio.se who like quiet uneventful stories. Beautifully written and giving a wonderful picture of the quieter, more unsettled times of the 'seventies, 'eighties and 'nineties of •the last century, this book is essentially a modern one as it vuus a parallel story of the youth of to-day, whom the author considers far more serious minded than the youth of the last century and with far less opportunities of enjoying himself. The famous author of "The Spanish Farm" has written a most delightful story, sometimes gay, sometimes sad, but intensely 'readable throughout. The story presents the case of Anthony Wellard, a successful man who retires from an overseas appointment, promising himself a renewed youth of leisure and enjoyment in the English town in which he was a bey. He falls in love with a young student teacher, the friend of his own niece, and upsets his sister and her husband by his fully. He takes the young girl to see the jubilee of George V and we have some wonderful descriptions of London and its crowds. His family are saved the unpleasant task of trying to make clear to him that his supposed renewed youth is in their eyes almost senile stupidity by the fact that K is "Time To Be Going." For the lovers of good literature Constance Holme is always a great joy. "The Old Road From Spain" is a. volume that dees not belie the beauty of her previous works and adds more lustre to her name. The background of the book is, as usual, the Westmoreland countryside, but an exotic note creeps into the tale by reason of the fa. t that its hero has a Spanish strain derived from an ancestor shipwrecked with the Armada. The strain shews itself, at intervals of a generation or so, by drawing back to the sea and 'Spain men, who, otherwise, are traditional English squires. The story hen; told centres round a gallant and, in one sense, a successful attempt to break this curse of heredity in the interests of love.