ROMANTIC ADVENTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21876, 11 August 1934, Page 9 (Supplement)

ROMANTIC ADVENTURE

AMONG ALPINE FOOTHILLS In " Storm Music " Dornford Yates has again accomplished with conspicuous success the difficult task of combining in the same story a delightful romance and a thrilling yarn, lhc simple language throughout the book makes it easy to read and the welldeveloped plot makes it equally hard to put down. It is a perfect book for a long evening before a warm fire. Again, the scenery is so well described that the reader gets easily into the countryside and follows without bewilderment the moves and countermoves of hero and heroine and a gang of suitably desperate villains. The plot is laid in vone of those romantic little corners of the Alpine foothills of Austria and there is none of the tedium of getting to know the characters. John Sjwncer, leaving his artist guardian to his painting, stumbles across the burial of a murdered man, drops a bill, and thus puts on his track a body of ruthless international criminals. From the livery of the victim he learns that he was the servant of the beautiful Countess Helena, chatelaine of Yorick, in the secret dungeons »of whose castle is stored in good gold l the accumulated wealth of her father. It takes but the meeting of John and Helena to bring about his vow of service. A sequence of thrilling changes of situation follow, some desperate, others romantic, at the rate of almost one to a page.

Thrust is swiftly followed by counter thrust, misunderstanding by happy agreement, until there comes the grand climax in the secret vaults of Yorick Castle, where John, whose blunders seem ever destined to work out well, accomplishes the end of the enemy in one master stroke. Altogether, "Storm Music " is a happy addition to the many charming stories that have come from the pen of Dornford Yates and will be enjoyed to the full by all who read it and put aside only with the greatest reluctance. " Storm Music," by Dornford Y&tes. (Hodder nnd Stoughton.)