BOOKS REVIEWED

Wairarapa Daily Times, 1 March 1934, Page 6

BOOKS REVIEWED

“The Purple Ball.” We have received from Mr Smart, Australian representative of the publishers, Messrs Hoddcr and Stoughton, London, a copy of Mr Frank L. Packard’s sensational novel, “The Purple Ball.” It is one of the finest books which Mr Packard has published.

Henry K. Morlan, reputedly a wealthy man, together with his friends, Mr Lao-ti, a highly educated Chinaman of Singapore and Shanghai, Count Gaspard Luvac, “of Paris,” Mr and Mrs Paul Stavert, and his daughter, are cruising in the Nepenthe, his 1500-ton private yacht, in Malaysian waters, when they pick up a native by the name of Kaya Dalam, who is found adrift in an open boat. Kaya Dalam recounts a strange tale of a wrecked schooner and a mysterious purple ball, obviously of' great vame, since already three have died in efforts to obtain it. He offers to lead them to where it is hidden on a certain small and uninhabited island —only to find it has disappeared. But Kaya Dalam is found stabbed, and later the wireless operator. Yet the island was certainly uninhabited. Someone on that ship) knows more than lie says. Someono on that ship wants the purple ball more than anything on earth —enough to murder for it! Who is it? Each is suspicious of the others, and Mr Packard leads us by some of the most exciting paths through which lie has ever taken us to the very last chapter where the dastardly villain is brought to book. f * * * “Crooked Horn.”

One of the most thrilling novels of its kind is “Crooked Horn,” written by that popular author, Max Brand, and published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton. This book is tilled with thrills, and is cleverly written. Benders will remember the thrills of ‘ ‘ Destry Bides Again,” the roar of guns that couldn’t miss in “Twenty Notches,” the hair-lifting exploits of the happy-go-lucky “Pleasant Jim,” and Charlie Dexter’s lone pursuit of the fiendish murderer, Scorpio, that made “Valley Vultures” one of tho roughest and toughest Westerns ever written. Here’s a new tale that surpasses them all—the story of a bad man whose hand was quick, but whose brain was quicker — packed with action, with guns cracking, with the smell of burnt powder and the desperate beating of hoofs! It is Max Brand at his best —the greatest Western story by the most exciting of all Western writers!

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