New-York tribune., 1921-04-24
Some Novels Which Stand
Out Among Spring Books
Color and Variety in New Works by Edith
Wharton, William ]. Locke, Gertrude
Atherton and Others

OF one on another through love and
the clash of beliefs openly propounded,
flouted or accepted, are the yeast of
ferment that enlivens the narrative and
makes the book peculiarly contempo-
raneous. A novel written with stub
born pen, daring and provocative of
criticism and meditation.
THE SEVENTH ANGEL. BY Alexander
Black Harrers.
QORROWING his imagery of title
~ from the Apocalypse, Alexander
Black gives his reader, in the girl. Ann
Forrest, feminine protagonist of the
woman independent nnd questing, now
with us and to appear in yet more
wondrous variety and sagacity.
Ann. returned from the war, where
she gave yeoman service. wades deep
into the tide of New York's seething
life. She is as direct as a bayonet and
as keen as razor. Truth is her fam
beau, and it lights her to heroic en-
durance of evil and an Amazonian
vigor in defending her ideas and ex-
amining the intentions of other people.
This novel is in a way depression in
form, for it merges brief, pithy discus
sions of social facts and propaganda
with the incident and accident of a
love story that threads many mazes
before arriving at fnalities. A book
full of thought for honest and profit
able rumination, and yet with happy
measure of merriment and brilliant
talk.
THE GREY ROOM. BY Eden Phiilpotts
Macmillan.
I'm this shrewdly conceived novel, with
l. haunted or deadly room as its
stage of action, Phil!potts has tried his
hand at new task and with success.
The grey room is situated in spacious
country home in southern England. 1t
is under q curse, so it would seem, for
men have slept in it and died in their
sleep.
To its door comes young sailor,
fresh from the war, welded to the
daughter of the owner of the house,
and he decides, laughing, to defy the
dare of the past and spend night in
the rooms great bed. At dawn he is
found dead at a window. Two men,
seeking to discover the secret Of the
rooms menace, follow his example and
also die
How the cause of the three deaths is
found is related vividly in a chapter
CT two that introduce new motif
into the realm of mystery stories. This
novel should receive a wide reading,
if only for its scholarly planning and
execution, and for it's dramatic hand
ling of moments thrilled with suspense.
BEAUTY AND MARY BLAIR BY Ethel
NJ. Kelley. Houghton Mfflin.
rENHE young woman of this novel is
so utterly up to date that she be-
comes at times disconcertingly disturb
irg. Her creator gives her a quintet
Of immediate relations, and the five
rvnge from a kid brother with preco-
cious knowledge of things he shouldn't
know to father who seeks fireside,
etc, beyond the front door. The girls
mother has her own little affair of the
heart. And so we are left, in COM
pleting the handful, with a married
sister and her husband who are
cranked up nearly to the limit on the
fool stuff of socialism.
What can one expect from such a
domestic combination but incessant
pickering and sordid secrecies? Mary
Blair gets a glimpse of beauty through
the fraternal vision of real man
outside the family, and it is the beauty
Of veracity in daily life, of rigid obe-
dience to truth. She trips and comes
near falling before she senses the full
significance Of this rectitude when
ADOPTED, but she is of the stuff of
fighters and comes through to a day
of dusting and polishing the family
regulations.
The cream Of this satiric commentary
on certain recognized dangerous ten
dencies in metropolitan life is it's cool
wit in repartee and comment
THE HOUSE IN QUEEN ANNE SQUARE,
BY w. d. Lyell G. p. Putnam's Sons.
THIS novel, one of the very few of
the last six months that have set
tings in Scotland, is cross between a
mystery and a detective story
The problem propounded in the early
chapters is one of identities. Two
brothers, twins closely resembling each
other, are riding in night express.
The train is wrecked and one of the
two Is found dead. But it transpires
that another traveller or the same train
saw through the glass, while passing
their compartment just before the
crash, one of them holding the other
, helpless in his arms and about to open
a door into the night.
This third man later meets the sur
vivor at the house in Queen Anne
Square, where an elaborate theatrical
performance is being presented. With
HIM is private detective from Lon
don who suspects the living twin Of
many and awful crimes. Shortly after
the night of the theatricals the author
of the play is found dying from poison.
And so the plot leads to a trial in Edin
burgh, which. by the way, is the best
thing in the book, evidently written bv
one who knows Scotch procedure in
criminal cases, graphic in it's clash and
fire before the jury.