Set In Chile

Southland Times, Issue 22969, 15 August 1936, Page 13

Set In Chile

Following Footsteps. By Louise Gerard. Mills and Boon, Ltd., London. 7/6.

Miss Gerard went a long way for the background for her latest novel. “Following Footsteps” is set mostly in the Sound of Relongcavi, in South Chile, and its leading characters comprize the descendants of a noble Spanish family, the del Maduros household, a nurse from the remoteness of the hill country of India, and members of English society. It is a fresh plot, written from the curse under which the patron of the del Maduros chalet laboured and it leads Clare Hilyard through many devious paths in her attempt to untangle a mystery which she inherited from her grandmother, apparently a most eccentric old lady, together with £lOO,OOO. _ Miss Gerard writes crisply, and despite the conventional and elaborate happy ending, keeps her tale free of sentimentality, “Following Footsteps” is distinctly above the average of its type.

Down the Twisty Lane. By Elizabeth Phillips. Mills and Boon, Ltd., London. 7/6.

Rich Miss Althea Vadney was only a few miles away from Gretna Green when she came to her senses, discovered Percy Garston-Blake’s true character, and decided very suddenly to return —unmarried—to her guardian. To avoid the complications that were inevitable from a chance meeting with some gossip friends of her jilted lover, she masquerades as a poor girl earning her own living. And so she meets Peter Breardon. Unfortunately he already has a wife. The eternal triangle is formed and, of course, finally broken. “Down the Twisty I me” runs true to type, but is a very readable love story which is just what it pretends to be.