RECENT FICTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22102, 4 November 1933, Page 4

RECENT FICTION

' " Twice Shy." By D. M. low. (Chatto and Wlndua.) „ _ _. “ The Ploughman’s Progress. By Sheila Kaye-iimlth. (Cassell.) " Experimental Child." By Winifred Graham. (Hutchinson.) _ _ . "Damned If They Do." By Helens Huntington Smith. (Chapman and Hall.) "Patchwork Palace." By Mabel M. Tyrrell. (Hoddor and Stoughton.) " The Autobiography of a Blackguard. By Baymdnd Paton. (Angus and Robertson; 6s 6d ne “ Understudy." By Berta Buck. (Hodder and Stoughton.) , - " Cross Marks the Spot.” By James Ronald. (Hodder and Stoughton.) _ _ " Death Whispers." By John B. Carr. (Ctssdll.) . . "Murder Is Easy." By Armstrong Livingston. (Skefßngton.) . ' _ , " The Case of the Velvet Claw. By Brie Stanley Gardner. (Harrap.) "Gallows Grange." By Henry. Holt. (Har- **" A Son of Texas." By Robert Ames Bennett. (Wild West.) . . , • (Eich 7s net, unless otherwise stated.)

A Year Abroad The reader of “Twice Shy,”‘which Is offered as a first novel, will not need to be told that it is the work of a writer experienced in , letters and in Rte, ~a worldly and civilised man, who, while realising that for most people disillusion is- a certain fate, yet finds existence tolerable for the entertaining moments that it brings. The onlooker sees most of the game, and tlje hero of “ Twice Shy, who becomes identified the author, derives more negotiable impressions from a year spent on the Italian Riviera than the usual tourists, simply because he is mentally detached from them. The resort to which he wanders is Torre del Vecchio, which in the summer is a place for the Italian bourgeoisie, but in the winter blossoms out as an English colony. “ You must not be severe about the people here,” he is told, “or you won’t get your money’s worth,” .and, although for the onlooker there it much provocation to severity, especially when Torre is besieged by the'arrogant, smug winter aristocracy of colonels, admirals, civil servants, and their wives and daughters, he is not devastating in his judgments. True, the English habitues of- the town —or station,” ts they prefer to call it—are presented with a sly malice, a clear-sighted--1 ness that is scarcely flattering, but Mr Low has the skill to suggest the pathos as well as the priggishness of his characters. Minor scandals, paltry social ambitions, winning at bridge,' are the pastimes of the place, but if the: stolid pursuit of these dubious pleasures narrows their devotees, and causes injustice and tragedy, the tragedy of persons reduced to this sorry method of enjoying _ themselves is hone the. less real. This is not to suggest that Mr, Low is bent upon making ijs weep in hie subtle studies of human relationships in Torres. His object rather is to amuse us, and most people who ■ enjoy ■ their comedy served with finesse will grant him his success. Since there is little in the way of plot in “Twice Shy ” it would be difficult, to particularise concerhing-thc mild adventures and flirtations which characterise life at Torres. It is (sufficient to remark that Mr Low’s book is preferable to most, travellers’ chronicles of. life abroad which definitely set themselves up as guides ,to the inexperienced, and that such continuous atory as it contains is human and diverting.

Sussex Ploughman MW Kaye-Smith has used the back-ground-of agricultural ( decay at various periods of English history .in earlier hovels, and in “The Ploughman’s Progress’’’(from Whitcombe and Tombs) she. brings the picture up'to date with a study;of conditions in Sussex from 1924 to the passing of the Wheat Act. The hero of her novel is a young ploughman of the- old-fashioned sort, Fred Sinden. who marries a housemaid and is contented enough until the sale of Float Farm by the mortgagors deprives him of a job. Fred and his wife and children obtain an old caravan and sustain themselves with odd jobs—fruit and hop picking and basket weaving. They find the nomad life easy and congenial, and when Fred is eventually offered steady work again they discover they have no real desire to return .to settled life. Miss Kaye-Smith suggests that there is a moral deterioration in the young couple which _is prevalent in rural England, and contains new problems for the future, and her incidental pictures of the struggle of the farmers and big landowners to maintain their holdings are not a cheering reflection on the state'of agriculture in the Old Country to-day. ' Like all : her novels, “The Ploughman’s Progress” is a competent piece of ’ work, though it lacks, perhaps, the spontaneity of her best.

" Experimental Child If heredity counted for, anythin?!, thought Lionel Thunder, his child should have psychic powers transcending any; thing previously known, since he himsell poseescd remarkable . mystic knowledge,, and Lorna, his wife, had made a livenhood by the exercise of her hypnotic strength upon circus lions. The meeting of these two was attended in the first place by drama, Lionel using all his hypnotic forces to infuriate Lorna e lions, and she fighting almost frantically against the unseen force. After the strange mental battle Lionel explains his theory for bringing into the world an expenmental child who. born of the .union of Lorna and himself, must inevitably he endowed, he urges, with supernatural powers. The marriage takes place, and in due course a eon, Terence, is born. To Lionel’s, consternation, however though Terence is intelligent, he possesses not one scrap of the powers which had been, hoped for. On the contrary, to the secret satisfaction of his mother despite her loyalty to Lionel, he exhibits strong tendencies towards becoming just an ordinary little boy. Habit, training, and envlronment all combined fail to change his nature, and when hie parents die in circumstances which are ghastly,but no more than an inevitable conclusion to Lionels thought-processes, his first desire is to become like ordinary people. He achieves his objective to some extent, but the descent upon the everyday world of a wealthy , and genial young man who, despite his. erudition, abstract though this may be, has never met more than a dozen people in his life, produces some astonishing results. Miss Graham’s book is sure to activate the mind, but it is not fantastic enough to affront itAmerican Marriage Helena Huntington Smith’s " Damned If They Do ” starts off with a story which promises to be as unconventional as its title, the main feature being the provision of much obstetrical detail of which most novelists who write of the begetting of children presume previous knowledge in their readers. Marny marries a mining engineer in New York, and finds that he? family of two is at once an absorbing and worrying responsibility.

While she stays at home attending to the children her husband pursues his amorous way with a glamorous celebrity, but Marny refuses him a divorce, and he returns to her. “ Damned If They Do is a plaimspeaking and sincere study of some of the problems of domesticity in a “man-made world,” and' only the ( puritanically-minded would take offence at it. As an indictment of the modern marriage ns it affects the woman it is, however, less convincing than the author intends, mainly, perhaps, because Marny’s husband is a particularly unreliable character.

“ Patchwork Palace ” Those who have read Mabel M. Tyrrell’s two former books —“ The Mushroom Field” and "The Noble Error’—will realise that in “Patchwork Palace, her latest novel, she has made steady progress. Not without a definite literary quality, her work is to be commended for evidence of clear thinking, a good, straightforward style, and the logical manner in which the events follow one on the other. Miss Tyrrell has conceived her plot on broad lines in Patchwork Palace,” and it proceeds somewhat on the lines of “Grand Hotel" and such novels. She tells the story of the lives, eventually intertwining, of the occupants of a new block of flats. First they are seen as separate entities, each living his own little life in his own way. but later as their paths cross a series of unusual situations arises, and what happens to one becomes the subject of interest to everybody, from the boy who works the lift to the residents of the top floor. There are some engaging characters, shrewdly depicted by the author, and her descriptive work bears the stamp ot attractive originality. Violinist's Progress

1 No indication is given in the Australian edition of “Autobiography of a Blackguard” of the age of the story, but it must be remarked that it is m a certain sense an “old-fashioned” tale, and that the title is somewhat misleading. Michael, the hero, certainly develops into an unscrupulous character, but over the whole. story of hig career there is a cloud of unreality. He is an orphan, who obtains possession of a magical stone which places him in tute age to a t»a of music. A condition of his gift, whidi enables him to.wm fame as a violinist, is that he shall abjure the love of women, and when he breaks hisi vow misfortunes come thick and fast. The book is illustrated with poor shots from a kinema production.

“ Understudy ’’ By way of infusing new colour into an old picture, Miss Berta Ruck has given the characters of “ Understudy a rol of the type they would have received had the book been a play, and the theatrical atmosphere is further accentuated by the similarity between the chapter headings and introductions to new^ scenes in stage performances. The story, that of a girl who acts as understudy tor her sister with the latter’s fiance on one occasion and finds the job developing into a permanent one, is not new, but its treatment is bright, and it possesses several novel features. The Author

Berta Ruck, the daughter of Colonel A. A. Ruck, was educated at St. Winifred s School, Bangor, in Wales, and studied at the Slade and in Pans with the ambition of a career in art. Her first guinea was made with an illustration for the Idler, a commission given to her by Oliver Onions, whom she later married, one turned to writing atricles and shorty stories, and in 1914 commenced her successful career as a novelist. She swims well, and is fond of travel, going by air whenever possible. v

Spot Marked X “Cross Marks the Spot* is an excellent story of its genre, written with light touch and a plausibility that makes the sensational happenings ’seem real enough for all entertainment, purposes, v ihe victim of murder is an obnoxious London kinema magnate, the person suspected ol the crime a charming girl with him ambitions, and the sleuth-in-chief a muchtravelled, hard-bitten adventurer who is working as crime reporter on a hleet street paper. The discretion with which, while extracting the maximum amount of “copy” from the girl’s predicament, ho also serves her and justice well, is commendable and unusual. American Mystery

“Death Whispers” is auother wellhandled mystery story, the action taking place at a millionaire’s mansion near Boston. The host is shot dead during a house par tv, and a genial private detective named Oceola Archer gets on the trail of the i murderer while the police are still nonplussed. Alert readers m’ay, through a greater intimacy with Archers investigations, discover the truth before it is made clear to Inspector Task, but their superior intuition will not discourage them from reading the novel to its end. “ Murder is Easy "

People with homicidal inclinations probably realise the truth of this title: What they overlook is that it is extremely difficult not to be found out. The syndicate which engineered the murder of young Batchelier with such skill_ as to make his death appear purely accidental were not satisfied to let matters rest there, but abducted Stanley’s aged grandfather

in the hopes of forcing him to draw up a will in their favour, Then began a series of trivial “ accidents ” to the smooth running of their plans, with the result that certain investigators turned their attention to sundry minute details, and the inexorable machinery of the law, once set in motion, slowly but certainly dragged the malefactors to their wellmerited punishment. Hidden Claws

“The Case of the Velvet Claws,” in addition to being a well-ordered mystery story, serves to shed new light on a judicial system which; seems little more than a parody of British conceptions of justice. Its central figure. Perry Mason, is an American solicitor who, as well as being well versed in all forms of procer dure, personally conducts investigations in the interests of his clients. One of these, however, in trying to avoid the consequences of her wrongdoing, attempts to fasten responsibility upon Mason, with the result that we are presented with the paradoxical picture of a criminal lawyer trying, for the honour of his profession, to save a client who / is attempting to make him her scapegoat. ■ His methods are successful, of course, but they are more than a little forceful, “ Gallows Grange ”

Written in Henry Holt’s befit style, “Gallows Grange” tells of a young man who comes to England to see his uncle for the first time in many years,, only to find that the latter is missing and there' are weird happenings at his home, ihe tale retains the- interest of the reader throughout a wealth of incident whicn eventually leads to the unmasking of tne criminal whose greed had been the ca u® e of the mystery. The identity of the master crook is well hidden to the end, irhen it is revealed in a startling fashion, There is an attractive little romance running through the story. “ A Son of Texas

, This book deals with the exploits of a Texan cowboy who treks north to engage in conflict of the conventional -variety with a bunch of desperadoes. Mr Bennett is experienced in this type of adventure fiction. . V. Y.