LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3509, 14 June 1921, Page 54

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. ‘Tbs 'Lbht Valley.” By J. M. Walsh. Published by The O. J. De Garis Publishing House, Melbourne. Here is an Australian story based on a theme which has allured many writers of romance, and proved fascinating to many readers—the search for hidden treasure. This particular story, while it cannot rank with the most successful of it 3 class, provides plenty of excitement i and suspense, and is written with anima- | tion and vigour. If it be a first novel | —and no others are credited to Mr Walsh , on the title page—it promises very well j indeed for his future as a weaver of talcs ! of plot interest. | ‘'The Lost Valley” is a narrow cleft in I j the fastnesses of the Grampian mountains, , Victoria, so el(>..ely walled in by precipi- ! tous or bush-clad hillsides as to have j missed discovery by all but two or three I wanderers, who have found and then lost | it, or ended their days in it, as one is shown to have done, by his own hand. Here, some forty years before the opening of the tale, two men hide gold which I they have robbed from the escort that | was conveying it across country for clci posit in a city bank. The store is large, | and two-score years later two different ; sets of people, who possess clues to its 1 hiding place, are ready to go to all lengths Ito discover it. '1 he more thoughtful ■ readers of the story will be disposed to I moralise on on the depraving fascination | that gold exercises over most human i beings. Here is a reputable, genial, j elderly gentelman, sufficiently well-endowed j with this world’s goods, who is willing I to risk his life, to break the law, and | incidentally to do any amount of shooting j that may be required in order to get the \ better of his counter schemers, who, it | may be said in his excuse, have first atj tempted his life; and all that he may be ’ rich, though he lias neither wife nor child Ito benefit by his wealth. And his niece, i in spite of tragedy, is fired with desire to I carry out his scheme, heedless of risk to ! herself. So much for the respectable j agents in the search ; the counter schemers | and the original robbers may be sur- | rendered as villains, out of the reach of | ethical considerations. The story opens j very well, its development being rather disappointing from the point of view of ; both construction and psychology. The j first part, which is told in the first peri son, tells how the narrator, who has led | an adventurous life in America and New Guinea and now is “down on his luck,” • meets the fat and genial Mr Bryce and ; sees his life atempted by a lurking assailI ant. He at once scents a mystery in j Mr Bryce’s secretiveness and refusal to i resort to police protection. The latter takes him into his employ as body-guard and future assistant in his projected expedition of discoverer, about which the narrator only learns later. Then conies on the scene Mr Bryce’s niece, who turns out to be a former financee of the narrator. Part second goes back forty years, telling circumstantially and picturesquely the history of the wanderings of the robbers in the mountains and their acciden- ; tal discovery by falling down its ! precipitous sides, of the “lost valley.” j With a book begun as a narrative of I personal experiences it is certainly an i error in construction to bring in a' long i narrative of things which the narrator I could only have vague and second-hand knowledge of, conversations and the thoughts and feelings of the actors being given with all fulness of detail. A book should be wholly in the first person, or wholly in the third, and when in the first should confine itself to what the ostensible narrator did, felt, and witnessed. Where many people have to be told about, and particularly when their minds are to be revealed to us, the ordinary historical form is the only one suitable ; with it the reader has not to think how the knowledge of all these intimate particulars could "’have been acquired. Then the two villains are not very convincing. It certainly seems a blunder on Bradby’s part to commit the needless crime of killing his comrade. There was ample gold for the two, and two were better than one in their flight from their trackers over rough and unknown country.

Again there is inconsistency in the representation of the heroine. A girl who would desire -her lover to betray the promise given to a dying father 'rather than delay their marriage must be both heartless and devoid of any conception of honour, but this is not "the light in which she shows herself, when several years later they again meet, Perhaps it may seem over exacting to demand psychological truth in books that are read for the interest of an ingenious plot and exciting incidents, but life-like characterisation and verisimilitude of circumstance are desiderata in any fiction that purports to deal with the world we know. And in real life surely- the heroine, a young lady of good reputation and on affectionate terms with her uncle, would have run no serious danger of being charged with his murder merely because she was found standing by him with his smoking revolver in her hand. The truth, which she desired to tell, that the fatal shot was fired through the window, and that she instinctively seized the loaded revolver her uncle always kept by him and fired in the direction of the unseen murderer was surely likely seeming enough. But her lover, a ready liar apart from sacred promises, persuades her that she must say she was with him in another room when her uncle was killed, and cleans and puts away his revolver, quite overlooking the fact that there are two bullet holes in the window to be accounted for, and forgetting also that if the deathdealing bullet could be found it would probably not fit the dead man’s revolver. If the police had been a little more thorough in the examination of the room it might have been brought home to him that truth is after all generally the best policy, at any rate when one is innocent.

There are defects, but Mr Walsh has shown that he can tell a good story. He has invention, and an animated, picturesque style, the dialogues and descriptions of the first portion particularly having a racy humour that is very attractive. “The Mystery of Wall’s Hill.” By Sydney Partridge and Cecil Haworth. New South Wales Bookstall. This is a very pleasantly written little romance of the Australian bush, written in collaboration by two authors, of whom the one who users ‘‘Sydney Partridge” as her pen name is a well-known Sydney wider, and has already published a pojiular bush novel, “Rocky Section.” I he mystery in chief of Wall’s Hill is the disappearance, a few years before the opening of the narrative, of John Wall, a bush settler, with the coincident absence and subsequent loss of memorv of his brother. There is permanent mystery too, in the cattle stealing that goes on over a number of years without anyone being brought to book. Rona Wall determines to solve the mystery cf her father's fate, and bring his murders to justice. After her father’s death she spent a year or two at school in the neighbouring township, then returned to live in the old bush home with her uncle. .She is a thorough bush girl—hardy, daring, as good a rider and shot as any bush man. There is a neighbouring family of a different type from the rest of the settlers, tile mother being of gipsy descent, and the sons, or some of them, repellent’v ruffianly. Rona finds that it is they who are the cattle duffers, and she discovers their hidden fastness in Wall’s Hill, by means of which they have been able to carry on their robberies, and escape capture. Their is a double love interest in the story. Rona is loved by a young cousin of the cattle stealing brothers, who shares their home, and she returns his love, while the sister of the criminals loves one of the men engaged in bringing them to justice. As will be surmised from this outline, there are abundant exciting adventures. Rona is seized and imprisoned by the cattle stealers when they learn that she has detected their doings, but one who is better hearted assists her to escape. Ihe -story is brightly and naturally written with plenty of picturesque description, so it should prove a very popular bookstall novel. “Bodger and the Boarders.” By Ernest O'Ferrall. This is another of the New South Wales Bookstall fifteen-penny volumes. It is a collection of short comic stories of the broadly farcin I kind, in which figure the boarders of Mrs Yribbens’ boardinghouse. Mrs Bodger, the senior boarder, fioures largely in mod of them. °The writer, better known perhaps by his pen name ‘ Kodak has a considerable reputation in Australia as a writer of humorous verse and tales. Y\ hy, by-the-bve does he call an enrvged young man a financee, or is the ssrond “e” systematically repeated—-a printer 4 * error? Air Percy Lindsay contributes several comic drawings, illustrative of incidents in the stories.