SKIT ON HEROINES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3401, 2 August 1932, Page 8

SKIT ON HEROINES

This is how P. G. Wodehouse in "Louder 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 corn, 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 cf 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 pap-

ers. The police may have warned her on no account to stir outside her house. But when a messenger calls at half-past 2 in the morning with an unsigned note saying 'come at once," she just snatches at her hat and goes. "The messenger is a one eyed Chinaman with a pock-marked face and an evil grin, so she trusts him immediately, and, having accompanied him to the closed car with steel shutters over the windows, bowls off i'n it to the ruined cottage in the swamp. And when the hero, at great risk and inconvenience 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."