NEW BOOKS

Southland Times, Issue 24685, 5 March 1942, Page 6

NEW BOOKS

NOVELS | ♦ ——- i SOLDIER OF FORTUNE j CALL THE NEW WORLD .By John Jennings. Hamish Hamilton, London, through Whitcombs and, Tombs. Price 10/6. Peter Brooke served as a lieutenant in the American forces which checked the British invaders at the gates of Baltimore, in 1814. He was cashiered after a senior officer had given perjured evidence against him. A lovers’ quarrel seemed to complete the ruin of his career, and he went off to Venezuela to fight under Simon Bolivar, and later in the famous Army of the Andes which drove the Spaniards out ot Chile. Brooke’s adventures on the march and in the great battles of the war of liberation are described with a vividness seldom matched in temporary fiction. His three love affairs are fitted naturally and attractively into a story which has been designed and executed on an epic scale. Call the New World” combines in its 550 pages the drama of history and the swift movement of an adventure story. It is a notable achievement. SPY HUNT ABOVE SUSPICION. By Helen Maclnnes. Harrup and Co., London. Price 8/- net. This is an extremely well written thriller. A young Oxford don and his wife are asked —because they are “above suspicion”—to spend their long vacation trying to trace an English agent who has disappeared in Nazi Germany. They have to begin their search in Paris and move cautiously into Germany, testing each link of the spy organization as they go. They soon have Himmler on their trail, and the last stage of their journey is' a violent chase culminating in a pitched battle in one of the private strongholds of the Gestapo. In Richard and Frances Myles Miss MacInnes has drawn two very agreeable and resourceful characters; and she tells her story with a realism and sense of atmosphere that place it in the highest class. GENIUS AT HOME RAIN EVERY DAY. By E. H. Clements. Hodder and Stoughton, London, through W. S. Smart, Sydney. Price 8/3 net. Valerie Lassan is the wife of a famous author and the mother of his three children. She lives with him in a dilapidated farmhouse on the Cornish coast, does the best she can with his small income, and acquires patience hi the face of his erratic and selfish moods. The lot of an author’s wife is not an easy one; but Valerie finds it endurable until Lassan’s Bloomsbury friends arrive en masse to encourage the neglected genius. Even then the presence of Adrian Cowdrey saves Valerie from despair and helps her to achieve a wisdom that is better than happiness. Miss Clements knows her writers, and depicts the nervy breed with irony and insight. “Rain Every Day” may not be a book for the multitude; but the understanding few will read it with enjoyment and gratitude. SCHOOLGIRL FILM STAR THURSDAY’S CHILD. By Donald Macardle. Hodder and Stoughton, London, through W. S. Smart, Sydney. Price 8/3 net. “Thursday’s Child,” a child “who has far to go,” is Fennis Wilson, the youngest child of worthy but undistinguished parents. The Wilsons are a happy family until Fennis accidentally becomes a film star while she is still a schoolgirl. She remains unspoiled, and slightly puzzled, in the midst of fame; but the sudden access of glamour reveals weaknesses in her home life and comes near to destroying the happiness of her parents. How Fennis, levelheaded and warm-hearted, restores peace of mind to the harassed family, is told with skill and insight in one of the best-written first novels of the season.