The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-09


 Doubleday, Page & Co.,, New Yorlx.)
 s1.2o.
 story of mystery, crime and love. A story briskly told and full of action. Not a moment is interest allowed to flag Attention is alert even to the last page. An apparently beautiful and
 saintly lady bountiful, wife of Sir Ian Hereward, has long hidden hypocrisy, vanity, falsification and forgery under an attractive exterior; of these vices she Is both the author and the victim: dis covery when 1t comes Is for her despair and death. A character in complete con- trast is the early love of Sir Ian, Tere- sina Ricardo, an adorable, naturalwom- an, who "suffereth long and Is kind" who "seeketh not her own, Is not easily provoked. thinketh no evil, rejoiceth in the truth" and in the end meets her unsought reward. The novel Is rem iniscent of a. famous case which some time back excited all England and Eng fish society.
 "The Chasm," by George Cram Cook. (Fredericx A. Stokes Co.,, New York.) s1.25.
 A sociel chasm divides an American heiress from her 1over a gardener. The chasm does not seem so impossible with Walt Bradfleld at work among the lilies,
  and hoe, but 1t would become impossible (to some) with Walt Bradfield seated at servants table beside the. coachmanl The scene slips rapidly from an Illinois town to Russia, for the heiress. Marion Moulton, chooses of her own free will, not the socialist gardener, poet and street haranguer, Walt Bradfeld, but the Russian count, Feodor de Hohenfels. The reader is hastened through con- spiracies and counter conspiracies. Though interest is kept alert and alive but little sympathy is awakened Ma rion too readily transfers her allegiance from her husband and his class to those who conspire against all authority. Thrilling as Is the story of the struggle of the Princess Sonia, Grenning, the young Jew, Kaminsky and the rest of the doomed little group, Marion, with little or no provocation to disloyalty to those of her husbands rank, seems a misfit among them. Across all shasms love finds away; Walt appears in Riga at the right moment. and the lovers return to the land of the free. Inter- esting, but not convincing.
 | 'Keeqing Up With Lizzie." by Irving Bachelor. (Harper & Bros, New York. $1.OO.
 tinual mild wonder. There must be readers who enjoy the species or there would not be so many of the variety | written The. chief parsonage in this | style of story is an old bachelor who reads lessons of homely wisdom to a | small community who delight to act
 with unbelievable stiffness until set right | by the village wise man. In this partic- | ular one of the genius is a Connecticut | lawyer, Soc Potter, who talks ''the dia- | lect of his fathers Ca most uncomfort- able family possession thaD by choice | and urges all to the living of ''the sim pleton life' The height of enjoyment | in this life seems to be feet on the piano stool,"-and thus we leave the | lisenced, aided and abetted meddler of
 the village calling upon his fiancee, This
 feet upon the piano stool.'
 ''The Gold Bag" by Caroline Wells. | Q.ippincott, Philadelphia. SIPS. Since Poe, and later Conan Doyle. have shown what could be done with the de- tective story many writers have fol-
 lowed in the path so brilliantly pointed out by these writers, some have fol- lowed Poe in his love of depicting the dark, the weird, the horrible while
 others have drawn their inspiration
 from Conan Doyle, merely trying their
 hands at stories of crime and bewilder- ment
 ..rhe Gold Bag'' masqnerades as de- l tective story, but would be adjudged Not guilty, if submitted to a jury of | It's peers. It shows traces of the feeblest
 invention and the author strains her
 credit to the utmost in standing spon- sor for it.
 If two men and one woman spell
 comedy, two women and one man trag- edy," "The Gold Bag possessing the
 requisites is yet neither fish. nor fowl.
 nor good red herring;" hot approaching
 tragedy, and altogether too decorous for comedy. Scarcely thrill Is caused by reading any portion of the book. Poe g
 mantle has not fallen upon the shoul- ders of Miss Wells.
 l The love interest is by no means neg lected, but there is no profound study of the human heart and Its emotions. 1t seems merely to have been added as one
 adds soupcon of salt to a mayonaise, l realizing that something is needed to
 improve the flavor, the effect being
 It could not do we'll without 1t. and is
 not improved by it. Love in the ordi- nary sense takes a very secondary part; | 1t is thrown in the shade as 1t rarely l is in fiction.
 The story paces soberly and steadily along too familiar road. crime Is committed The heroine Is accused of
 murdering her uncle, who has been
 found dead in his library. gold bag
 found on his table seems to furnish con-
 elusive proof of her guilt. she being
 known to be possessed of such an arti- | cle This she can neither produce nor give a satisfactory account of it's loss The author insists upon the strong in-
 dividuality of the heroine. but the read
 CT will scarcely agree with her. The
 slow developbent of the story does
 hardly anything to set apart this pallid
 young woman from her kind. Every
 thing happens just as 1t should happen,
 and trivial commonplaces are accentu- ated and long drawn out. In matters
 of sentiment the young woman in ques-
 ton Is cool and distant. Throughout the
 story she impresses as being wooden. Love, sentiment, imputations of crime, all leave her unmoved. To be sure shs faints now and then, but that serves but
 to make more prominent the fact that
 when a string is pulled a wooden puppet
 will novel Merely this and nothing
 more.
 | An effort Is made to sustain the curl
 osity of the reader until the proper hour
 for revelation arrives, but the plot Is too
 slight to hold interest and hardly serves
 to hold the component parts of the story
 together, though full quota of space Is
 consumed in leading up to the climax.