BOOKS and BOOKMEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17116, 23 November 1929, Page 14

BOOKS and BOOKMEN

IN CHINA. For • Chinese customs, peculiarities, and habits, and a whiff ol the life of Europeans on the China coast read “By Soochow Waters,” Louise Jordan Alibi's latest novel. The story is laid entirely in Soochow, and relates that two European women live opposite each other on a canal, the one the widow of a Chinese, the other an English no velist, who is in Soochow to be alone and write a novel. They do not speak to each other, although there is not another white person in sight. Incredible, but then there are so many kinds of women. The one (the novelist) does not want to know anybody, the other is left severely alone by the European colony because she has been married to a native, and the arrival of a girl who happens to be related to both brings; a meeting, and they find they are cousins. But for the arrival of Margaret Fivers (says the story) they would probably never have met. There is the picture of Man Ling, a handsome Chinese aristocrat, educated at Oxford, who is, kin to the widow through her deceased husband, and who foils in love with Margaret Fivers. Through the girl the story opens out on pictures of Anglo-Chinese society, and, the engagement of the visitor to the Chinese is the. theme of the major pgrt of it. The author has written many welhknown books with Oriental settings, notably “The Flutes of .Shanghai,” “The Feast of Lanterns,” and “In a Shantung Garden.” The one under notice is a love story, lavishly colored with Chinese scenes. (Hodder and Stoughton, London).

MAURICE WALSH'S NEW NOVEL. The author of “The Key Above tho Door" (which called cheers from J. M. Barrie) has produced a delightful book entitled, “The Small Dark Man." No desperate adventures or hair-breadth escapes in this story, no lighting—excepting one with lists between the small dark man and a tall blond rival. The small dark man was at .Gallipoli, but this is all post-war in which he and a former comrade in arms come together in the mountains of Scotland, it is of men and women, their oddities and whimsies. Tho title character, Hugh Forbes, is an Irishman, .one of the kind that has little time for brooding over the wrongs of Ireland when life is all spread out ahead with plenty of room for light-hearted men. His friend is a Scot of the Highlands: Their' lirst meeting is related. It was somewhere in the sand between Gaza and Jerusalem. “A Glasgow Irishman" Forbes recounts, was after slicing the car off a corporal with a trenching, tool, and the court-martial was on, the colonel sitting in state on tsvo ammunition boxes. Forbes was “by Way of being un adjutant," and the other was an orderly officer fresh up from the lights of Cairo. Young he was, very young. The prisoner came in, and the colonel, sitting as if he were on a throne, says: “Well, my man! Have you anything to sy y!” “1 have," says the other. “ Wmtl ?" says the eotoned. “That," says the bold fellow and kicks the two boxes out from below the colonel. And Forbes looked at Grant and Grant looked at Forbes, and they knew each other “till great Gabriel'» trump." They held each other and,the laugh they had split the canvas. Here they are in the story, David and Jonathan, meeting after a long separation, and tho small dark man is looking in the Highlands for a red-haired girl, but finds one tinted otherwise. A refreshing book, with the heather all around, and the mountain mists closing in now and again. (Cornstalk Co.).

REFRESHING SATIRE

lii “The Perfect Friend ” (Cassell), Mr. Collinson Owen has taken the more unusual case of a four-cornered problem as a welcome change from the eternal triangle. Both husband and wife eoniided their attraction to the elderly bachelor friend, and he finds wiles to extricate them both but loses his own freedom in the business. The tale, with its mild satire and pleasant humor, is refreshing after more solid fare. A PADRE’S WAR MEMORIES. There is in a book just announced an indirect protest against the ‘ ‘ vieiousness ” of some recent war novels. It is called “Plain Tales Prom Plamlors, ” and it is by the Rev. P. P>. Clayton, the vicar of All Hallows Barking. He was the founder and padre of Toe H, and here is a bundle of his memories, some sacred, some jocund, drawn front the private annals of Talbot House in Poperinghc and Vpres. Like his “Tales of Talbot House,” it “stands guard over the men of Flanders, their human worth, their merriment, their proved diseiplcship. ”

“Red Aces,” by Edgar Wallace. (Hodder and Stoughton). Give Mr. Wallace a lonely house on the outskirts of London, or a barge on the mud of the lower Thames, a dead body, and a dark night, and he will provide you with hours of entertaining reading. That he does it without once crossing his tracks or doubling his characters is as remarkable as the stories' are thrilling. Our old friend Mr: Reeder is the hero of this trio of tales, the Jatevt product of Mr. Wallace's fertile imagination. He succeeds where Scotland Yard fails, and his imperviousness to bombs and bullets and poison is simply marvellous.

“GOLDEN HARVEST," A NORTHERN TERRITORY STORY. “Golden Harvest," bv H. Haverstock Hill, is a story of the Northern Territory—-gold tho keynote. Phillip Koyden ami John Wade, who met in Kulgoorlie, have discovered a mine in Lite sandy desert, but Wade dies just as he is about to tell Kovdeu of his daughter ia Brisbane. Royden sets out alone, reaches Pine Creek, and goes on to Darwin, where Billy the Greek and his jackal, Gentleman Tony, shadow hint, knowing that.he has been on gold. Royden finds Wade’s daughter in Brisbane, and the girl goes to Darwin whither Hoyden

has gone with Ipping, an engineer, on route for the mine. There is an educated Chinese, Yeng How, representing the fourth factor. The girl makes the acquaintance, of Gentleman Tony, but, is .kidnapped,by the Greek arid taken away inland. Tony, giving up his evil ways, sets out in pursuit, having broken with the Greek. Royden is at the mine with Ipping. Tony rescues (he girl from the Greek, and togethersthey seek- the prospectors; coming' up with them at the mine, the Greek and his party in pursuit. At the mine there is a battle, Tony taking part-and being killed. When matters arc looking bad for the prospectors and the girl, be-, koldy another party comes over the skvliiie, and the Greek/beset in front and behind, is captured. It is Yeng How, the Chinese, seeking implacably the vengeance of the Oriental for the murder of his father in the past. The murderer was Billy the Greek. Hoyden and the girl are iu love, and as the mine goes four ounces to the ton, all is as well as could be. The story is a quickly moving one, and Darwin and the Territory provide good coloring with the mixture of nationalities available to the novelist in that country of black, white, and yellow people. (Hodder and' Stoughton, London).

“GOLD BULLETS" MYSTERY AND A .MINING DAMP.

The old Californian millionaire is found dead in his room. He had not been shot with gold bullets; a dagger was sunk in his nock; but the last words'he had been heard to utter were “gold bullets.” The story, by Charles Booth, is one of those rapid ones that make the reader sit up late to finish. An old friend of the millionaire, a collector of weapons, has bought an old gold-mounted revolver, containing cartridges with gold bullets in them. One cartridge is found to have been tampered with, and underneath it, packed in the shell, is a note, giving a misty due to the murder. The revolver had belonged to a swaggering gnnibler, well known thirty years before in a rough, lawless mining town, fin individual who wore silver spurs and carried gold-mounted revolvers; but the connection between the dead millionaire and that fantastic kind of weapon is lacking. There is a harking back to.the days of the rush and the riotous life in the camp, which, like many goldfield towns, is still there, but abandoned. The action is changed to the locality, and the incidents in the search to unravel the mystery, which involves the millionaire's son, arc as exciting as those related of the place when it was living its feverish span. We have a game of poker with a man’s life ns the stake, the man being about, to suffer lynch law. The events of the history of the crime thirty years before and the murder of the millionaire are remarkably ingenious in the way they are put together, and the book is well written, and not overdone. For that class of novel it is one of the best that has appeared lately. (Hodder and Stoughton). “HOT WATER,” A COMEDY IN INDIA. A commission ou health, hygiene, and welfare gets into hot water in Mrs G. H. Bell’s novel through a lovely lady secretary. The chief commissioner' (Lord Brierley), it is related, might have been Governor of New Zealand but for what happened. The secretary (Ann Knightloy) has the entire commission and newspaper correspondents dancing attendance around her. There is a night adventure wherein the commissioner comes to blows with one of the party. The secretary is mixed up in it, and The laurels that were expected by Lord Brierley, and which would be followed by the New Zealand governorship, are spoiled, and he has to finish portion of his commission with a bandaged eye and a scandal —all over a reason which did not exist. The story, is told with a Jot of dry humor. (Hodder and Stoughton. London; Dymock’s, Svdney).

“Filibuster,” by B. Dyke Aclaml. (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr. Acland gives himself abundant opportunity to display his gifts for romantic story-telling in this care-fully-planned account of a small scale battle for the presidency of the little South American State of Unaboa. A rascally dictator and his rival, General Zorega, are carrying on an interminable war of attrition when financial interests decide to take a hand in the game, and give the general their moral support —also some machine guns. A - lively little skirmish then ensues, in which Air. Acland comes out strong, flooding his tale with color and , movement, and entering on fascinating . strategic, details with immense verve.

“Night Lights,” bv Max Pemberton. (Mills and Boon);

in the .bundle of short stories entitled “Night Lights,’ ’ we/have more than one example, not only of the story within the story, but of the story after the story, ami this without anv undue sense of dawdling. The taie that gives its title to the volume, for iustancc, contains a Mexican adventure which might well have been rewarded by a story to itself. “ White Train and Broad Arrow,” not content with recording adroitly the escape of a convict, passes on to his subsequent life with a blind girl in Paris; this, too, under a less lavish management, might well have demanded a special compartment. Then in “At Midnight” a young literary man, anxious to write about pearls, has a story of real life intimately related to pearls flung right at him. But this is not enough for the robust and inventive author of “Night Lights,” who gives us into the bargain a wholly .unexpected study in the pM?W of u>m P tation -