By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY
311 pages, size 7½ x 5 cloth, 3 stampings, $1.00
It is rather unusual to find a detective story written from the criminal’s point of view, and truth to tell, in this “Rogue’s Conscience,” by David Christie Murray, we find our sympathies and anxieties strongly following the hunted ones. Mr. James Mortimer and Mr. Alexander Ross were such entertaining sinners, and their disguises were so marvellous, and their escapes so hair-breath, that we follow the comedy of their fortunes with unfailing cheerfulness. When the scene shifts from city risks to the broad field of mining camp speculations, we see the beginning of the end, for here the “rogue’s conscience” commenced to work, and a double reformation ends the book in a blaze of glory. The story has just enough seriousness to give it balance but by no means enough to destroy the pleasantly light and entertaining quality of the book.—Literary World, August 5, 1899.
David Christie Murray has written an amusing tale of two unworthies in “A Rogue’s Conscience.” “If you want to enlighten a rogue’s conscience, serve him as he served other people—rob him,” observes the “hero,” who has acquired the “sixth sense of honesty.” How he arrived at this sage conclusion, and how he put the principle into effect, all tend toward the live human interest of a story which shows no sign of lagging from beginning to end. The tale is not free from tragedy, but even the sombre parts are handled easily and lightly, as though the author believed them necessary, but yet felt freer in the atmosphere of almost light-hearted roguery which pervades most of the volume. The book is capital reading for a summer afternoon, and action lurks on every page.—American, August 31, 1899.
Two rogues, who figure in the novel as James Mortimer and Alexander Ross, in alliance with a third scamp, forged an issue of the Bank of England. The nameless third paid the penalty of his crime, but Mortimer and Ross, through the clever scheming of Mortimer, escaped to British Columbia after having added to their ill-gotten gains. Mortimer, apparently the most unscrupulous, makes the singular atonement which transforms him into a hero.
—Publishers’ Weekly, July 22, 1899.
A Man’s Undoing
By Mrs. H. LOVETT CAMERON
333 Pages, size 7½ x 5 cloth, 3 stampings, $1.00
A retired English officer, returned to his widowed mother’s quiet home in the country, finds his undoing in idleness, which leads him into a flirtation with a girl socially and intellectually his inferior, but who is clever enough to force marriage upon him. Then complications thicken, as the man discovers the full meaning of his fatal mistake.