OF REAL PEOPLE AND EVENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23169, 15 October 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

OF REAL PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Fascinating Stories

By J.M.C.

A MAN who wrote to Rosita Forbes from Newcastle just before she left London to spend eight months wandering about Africa seems to be responsible for her latest book, "These are Heal People." Miss Forbes describes in her preface how he said: "I never read a novel. 1 like to read about real people, and anyway, most novels are so dull .... so when you write another book, please let it be about real people and the things that certainly do happen, hot and strong, outside England, I mean." "Hot and Strong"

Tho answer to this request for something "hot and strong" is this fascinating collection of stories of ordinary and extraordinary people in more or loss fantastic circumstances. Rosita Forbes is one of tho most travelled women of to-day, and a career of amazing adventure has brought her into contact with all sorts and conditions of men —rebels, outlaws, romantics, and fugitives from civilisation. Somo of these have been her companions in strange and exciting circumstances, and it is of them she writes in "These are Real People."

She has drawn her material from almost every corner of the globe. "Zebra Men" is a storv of the thieves and murderers, who wear red and white striped pyjamas, and aro condemned to a living death in French Guiana —largest prison in the world. From Djibouti on the Red Sea conies tho grim story of tho strange and brutal Frenchman who called himself Jean do Brouglie—tho only human being of whom Rosita Forbes was ever afraid. Real Gangsters In lighter vein is "Throe Men in Chicago." It is a fascinating account of real gangsters and of visits in company with Public Enemy No. 2 to such places as tho scene of the St. Valentine's massacre, where seven men were ranged against tho wall of a garago and mowed down bv machine-gun fire, and a Syrian cafe which sells dope under cover of tobacco. Later in the same city Rosita Forbes makes friends with a lieutenant of the police flying squad and goes riding in u patrol car. Tt has tear-gas bombs under the back scat, sawu-off shotguns 011 the floor, and the three detectives of the squad carry revolvers. With this squad the writer visits police cells, watches an identification parade of suspects, and finally helps to save 22-vear-old .Tames Larue from tho horrors of Florida's chain gang. Scores of equally strange people pass through the pages of "These are Real People." It is an intensely interesting book in which Rosita Forbes, in sketching the lives of others, reveals much of what sbo herself has felt and done beyond, if not outside, the law. "These are Real People," by Rosita Forbes. (Herbert Jenkins.)