Millionaire Missing

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

Millionaire Missing

SCOTLAND YARD UNIMPRESSED Mr Freed Investigates is by Ladbrook Black, a Nelson issue at 7/6. Mr Freed is a solicitor, but fretting at the soulless sobriety of monotonous respectability. A millionaire disappears, Scotland Yard looks on for a bit, then decides there is nothing important, no demand for ransom having been made. Hiram P. Storrs is the millionaire, and Miss Storrs persuades Mr Freed to dedicate his gifts to the search which the Yard has abandoned.

Exciting Events

Mr Freed rather welcomes the opportunity. He feels the stirring of unrecognised ability. Things begin to happen. Adventures close in upon him. Thrilling contacts with an escaped convict and a shady night club, rescue of companions kidnapped and scheduled for torture and death are part of exciting events that move swiftly and alarmingly through the story. Freed has courage and tenacity. He has personal charm also. As an investigator he is more lucky than brilliant. But that hardly matters. He gets there, of course —but I’m telling too much. 3 •tj % s? “SAPPER” AND EDGAR WALLACE IN ONE Gerald Cunningham is a persistent young man who might be useful to Mr Nash. He is successful in uncovering an organised smuggling of money out

of a country. The story is called Into Thin Air. It is by George Vaizey (Harrap, 7/6). Miss Dorothy Jameson says it ‘‘combines most happily the ingenuity of The Ringer with the verve and abandon of Bulldog Drummond. Gerald Cunningham is despised by Gloria whom he loves, because he treats his job as a joke and even wangles leave to play to a cricket match at Frinton. But Gerald’s position of diplomatic liaison at Tallinn, Estonia, is a blind for his real work, uncovering the organisation mysteriously draining Estonia and her neighbours of money.

“Living on an island off Frimon is a foreigner, his wife and daughter. The day Gerald is due to leave for Tallinn he decides to explore this island secretly. He is ignominiously kept prisoner for some days before being allowed to escape. Meanwhile Gloria learns how she has misjudged Gerald and goes to Tallinn to find him. She accidentally hits on one method of smuggling the money and the story works up to a grand climax of danger and adventure. Clever as the money scheme is, there is a better surprise at the end, one of those tricks which one should have foreseen and somehow missed—owing to the author’s skill and not the reader’s stupidity, we hope.” -x- * * A CRIME A DAY Two among earlier new novels of this year that attracted my attention recently (one from the public library), provided unusually good reading in detection and problem interest. Not being a lawyer I was not greatly bothered by a subconscious misgiving that The Wills of Jane Kanwhistle had a flaw in its foundation.

The story is by Sydney Fowler, and Herbert Jenkins publish it at 7/6. You remember “Brewster’s Millions, a perfectly hilarious romance of a young man inheriting on condition that he spends a nominated and enormous sum of money within a year. We are apt to say: “Easy enougth, give me the chance!” But Brewster found it exasperatingly difficult, and you undeistand the difficulty as the story moves along with growing excitement and tense doubt as to wheher he won’t miss the bus at the finish.

In “The Wills of Jane Kanwhistle,” Aunt Jane leaves £IO,OOO to Fred Corder on the astounding condition that he commits a felony or misdemeanour every day for a year—36s minor crimes —without once being found out.

Of course, if you take any observant notice of titles you will suspect from the plural in this title that here is another will designed to set everything right in due course before the “condition” drives Fred to desperation and gaol.

Eccentric! Illegal?

Then, you may be haunted with the misgiving I have mentioned, by doubting whether any such eccentric bequest could have been drawn up, or being drawn up, could be maintained, seeing that it imposes a condition against public good, by inciting to crime. However, not having a trained and learned legal mind I jettisoned this problem and sat down to enjoy the story itself as something new and amusing and too good to be sacrificed to a legal problem, or to the anticipation awakened by the title, that another will is scheduled to turn up at a critical moment.

Of course there might be no difficulty for Mr Corder if he were of the lawless tough-guy disposition. But he isn’t. He is an artist of sorts, a cover designer with nothing worse than an aptitude in the direction of depicting attractive girls and sejcy appeals. Moreover he is married.. However, this is a help rather than a hindrance, for when his invention scarcely rises above stealing a daily bun from a teashop, his wife suggests something easier and less likely to provoke detection.

It is not long before Corder's daily bad deed becomes a burden. From buns to pinching library books—but what next? At one time, when fairly launched on his felonious career it looked possible that murder might raise its head for a place in the list. But the second will turns up and the tension is released just before breaking point.

This is a story to enjoy, not to criticise. It is written to oiler something fresh in sustained amusement, and if time lags heavily, or cares oppress, or colds put you to bed for a season, this story oilers good companionship and cheerful entertainment.