REAL LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11717, 6 June 1916, Page 7

REAL LIFE.

• * IN NEW YOKJv CITY. 1 ho publisher's circular 'which describes Mr Rupert Hughes as "the Dickens of New York " is really not so fulsome as ;it iirst glanco ifc would apurvir in be. Heaven alono knows liow maiiv books it has been my fato to toad' bv American, writors who profess to be describing the lil'o of the people of that great nnd conglomerate nation, and Heaven ulono also knows- how truo to life most of them are. But there is a verisimilitude about the work o.t Mr H upcrt Hughes that makes you feel !hat you are living amongst the people (Ufil he describes, and that is a, mw'ii deal 10 say .about the modern American author. He certainly knows iiis p"bp!e well, and vho description of all tirades of life in the complex web of New York smacks _ at times very much of the same. sjurii, that has made world-famous the stories of that prince nt' American writers, ,tho Into (J. Henry. In cwo of his latest books, "Empty Pockets v and '' Clipped Wings," Mr Hughes has d'one oven better work than h.e produced in ''What NY ill People Say:'", which was u book ol

great sales in its day, and in " Empty Pockets " it is safe to say that he has reached tho highest point in his literary production so far. Them .is a fearful tendency among modern American writers—a. tendency probably characteristic of tho lives lived by tho people of the country—to make up any sort of ".best seller'' with impossible heroes, worse heroines and drawings to match, so that the person who is forced to id'lo away the weekend on a yaent will bo sufficiently bored to iill in tho time in a sufficiently conventional manner. So many of these books are issued by otherwise sane-seeming publishers that one sheers oif American books with f>, sort of scare when they siro unwrapped. But there is nothing of tho stereotyped American hero and his friends about the work of JMr "Hughes," and in "Empty Pockets" ho provides tho reader with a story that is full of .sensation and intrigue, but that is quite probably fojr such a bad place as Jittlo old New York, and a story that never drops from a highly sustained interest to banality. The story is a fine example of what can be done with tho mystery of a millionaire's death, a. number of women with red hair, a young girl with rich -parents who wishes to go slumming, and a keen newspaper man and d lover thrown in as a, make-weight. Tho mystery is a baffling one that is kept up right to' tho end, and tho characters live in every page. Particularly good arc the toughs, lied'. Ida and her husband and their gang, and tho life of the lower side of the great city is described with a power that shows that the writer knows his subject thoroughly. Mr Hughes has a happy—albeit some ■what sarcastic—vein of comedy that never becomes obtrusive, and all his people aro vital enough to bo interesting. ' It would be unfair to both the writer and the prospective,reader to say just how tho mystery is solved and what it is all about, the pages of tho book reveal that as tho tale unrolls, but it is sufficient to say that the denouement is sufficienlv unexpected to be decidedly clever, and the story carries the reader 011 breathlessly to the end. Mr Hughes is a distinct relief from most of the alleged authors that inhabit the publishing houses of America to-day. " Empty Pockets," by J'npert Hughes; Harper and Brothers, per Whiteombe and Tombs. Price 3s Gd.