New-York tribune., 1907-08-31

: in view Of the length of the narrative and in
his final disposition of the lover Mr.. Bagot
strikes a dubious note. None the less are
grateful to him for thoroughly readable ro-
nance.
The Manleverer Murders" is one OF those
stories of crime in which the author plays d
kind of game with the reader, making move
after another which promises to explain the
mystery afoot, but which only serves to deepen
the general darkness. Questions of character
are important in g work OF this sort-if the
! writer happens to possess gifts. such as
Mr.. Fox-Davies cannot pretend to claim. They
scarcely count however in most cases, where
the pleasure of mystifcation is the main
thing AS inventor of puzzles the author of
THE Manleverer Murders is entitled to hon
orable rank We have not, in a long time,
read a detective story in which the crucial Sc
cret was better kept than in this tale of whole
sale crime. Colonel Manleverer. British officer
returned from long career in India to enjoy
the life of a wealthy man at home, has five sons
On the thirteenth Of the month one of these
young is found dead. and though a bullet
had killed him a knotted rope in the form OF a
moose is found round his neck. When. precisely
4 month later. the body of one of his brothers
is f1shed out of the river it, to- has the knotted
cord around the neck Thirty days pass and
third son is murdered and left with the same
strange symbol on his body; with months in
terval q fourth is likewise disposed of; and
Colonel Manieverer is all but conquered in his
struggle to protect the fifth from a fate whicn
is the horrible since can discover
or even guess at the motive behind the whole
nendish campaign. The reader very soon be-
comes nearly as excited the colonel and his
aids the solving of the problem. and we
put it to the credit of Mr.. Fox-Davies that he
leads his reader wellnigh exhausting dance
Decidedly. this is a detective story to make the
faded connoisseur of clever sensatioralism sit
up" 1t is unfortunate that it should be at the
same time unnecessarily coarse. A writer so
ingenious should think. might easily have
worked out his amazing plot without giving II.
here and there. the sort Of twist that leaves a
bad taste in the mouth.
Mr.. HiChens's "Barbary Sheep is described
on the title page as "a novel,. hgx it takes open
Typography and marginal pen drawings every
page to swell the book TO the physical bulk Of
the ordinary novel and tbs actual text is even
less deceptive. This IS really, in form, long
short story and in substance scarcely more than
an anecdote such Maupassant would have
perfected in fifteen twenty closely knit pages.
The heroine is a clever and capricious young
Engiishwoman, whose husband. Sir Claude Wy
verne Gotes upon hunting is almost. If not
quite. unimag gnative, and cheerfully answers
to the name of Crumpet when il falls from the
lips of his adored Kitty. They make a trip 10
Algiers and presently find themselves on the
brink of the desert. Sir Claude expects to be
bored to death but is enchanted on learning that
he may get a shot at some Barbary sheep. He
makes bones of leaving his wife behind him
at the inn while he goes off hunting. and she
proceeds TO ffirt with handsome young Arab
an officer Of the Spahs. From this situation
Mr.. Hichens draws his story. II is a clever
story. Lady Wyverne is amusing and We OBJ
serve with some solicitude the progress OF her
relations with the Spahi. which begin innocent
~ enough. but OF course tend to drama. The
tale would have been rendered much moro ef-
feCtive though. if the author had pulled II
together with some sense OF art and made 1t
only about half as long. Tricked out as "a
novel it seems n very slight performance 10
come from the author Of The Garden Of Allah"