I am aware that, in confessing to an entire ignorance of any one of the so-called Books of Artemas, I place myself in a minority so small as to be almost beneath notice. This certainly is how the publishers regard the matter if one may judge by their ecstatically jubilant, "Artemas has written a novel! 7s. 6d. net," on the wrapper of A Dear Fool (Westall). Well, I have read the novel carefully, even I trust generously, with the unhappy result that (knowing how elusive and individual a thing is laughter) I can hardly bring myself to say how dull I found it. But the fact remains. It is all about nothing—a preposterous little plot for the identification, at a wildly inhuman reception, of an anonymous dramatist, revealed finally as the journalist hero who was nearly sacked for writing the play's only bad notice. In my day I have met both editors and critics; even dramatists. I don't say they were all pleasant people; many of them were not. But—here is my point—practically every one of them had at least sufficient of our common humanity to prevent them from behaving for one instant as their representatives do in this book. Let us charitably leave it at that. Probably the next man I meet will have invited apoplexy over his enjoyment of the same pages that moved me only to an irritated bewilderment. You never can tell.
I rather think that The Man with the Rubber Soles (Hodder and Stoughton) is Sir Alexander Bannerman's firstling, at least as far as fiction is concerned. If so, many others will share my hope that it may prove to be the eldest of a large family. For the author has not merely the knack of telling a good mystery story in a way that keeps one interested until the last page is turned; he tells it in a curiously dry matter-of-fact way that makes really startling adventures seem the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. The story concerns the pursuit of a gang of men who are engaged in importing forged Treasury notes on a large scale and uttering them through skilfully organised agencies. The police and various civilians between them—there is no super-sleuth to weary us with his machine-like prowess—run the thing to earth, partly by skill and partly by good luck, and the civilians in particular have a stirring time doing it. Bombs, automatic pistols, even soldiers and a submarine, assist quite naturally in sustaining the interest. And a pleasant little romance is really woven into the plot, not just pushed in anyhow. Altogether The Man with the Rubber Soles is a most excellent story of its kind, a real novel because plot and treatment are alike new, and one can safely prophesy that when Sir Alexander Bannerman produces his nextling he will find a large and appreciative circle of readers waiting to welcome it.
Three things charmed me particularly about Henry Elizabeth (Hurst and Blackett), whose remarkable second name was due to the fact that he was born in the same year as the Virgin Queen and that his father had hoped that he too would be a girl. In the first place he became the greatest swordsman of his age and I was thus able to add him to my fine collection of Elizabethan heroes who have achieved this honour. What happens when two of these champions meet in those shadowy regions of romance where all costume novels are merged I do not know. It must be rather like the irresistible force and the immovable object. In the second place H.E. (no one could better deserve these formidable initials) was given the job of clearing Lundy Island of its piratical tenants, and I happened to have Lundy Island just opposite me as I read the book. It is not often that a reviewer has the chance of checking local colour with so little pains. And in the third place Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy informs me, on page 101, that his hero will "gaze one day upon rivers to which the Thames should seem little better than a pitiful rivulet." As Henry never gets further from his native Devon than London in the course of this novel I take it that this is a delicate allusion to the possibility of a sequel. I hope it is so, and that I shall hear of Henry in days to come, after a trip or two with Raleigh or Drake, rebuilding his manor of Braginton, which was unfortunately burnt to the ground, and settling down to plant potatoes and tobacco in prosperity and peace.
From the title, Brute Gods (Heinemann), you may guess that Mr. Louis Wilkinson's new novel does not deal with homely topics in a vein of harmless frolic. In recommending this very serious work of an expert author and observer, I am bound to make some reservation. Unsophisticated youth, if such there be in these days, should be kept away from the affair between Alec Glaive and Gillian Collett. Alec, a mere boy, was in a dangerously unsettled condition when the lady crossed his path. His mother had upset a not too happy family by eloping with a literary poseur; the egoism of his father had been rendered even more oppressive and his sarcasm even more acid thereby; and a Roman Catholic priest, intent on securing a convert for his Order, had been plying his young mind with too exciting conversations and too refreshing wines. Apart from external circumstances, Alec was tending to quarrel with humanity at large, and so he went the whole hog, more in search of a desperate ideal than by way of impetuous sin. Mr. Wilkinson treats the affair with deliberate, cold-blooded, even cynical analysis; and his portrayal of the snobbery and humbug of the upper-middle class, social and intellectual, in which his creatures move is searching and disturbing. But, I ask myself, are people really like that? Or rather are there enough of these unnaturals, extremists, moral Bolshevists or whatever you like to call them, to justify their presentation as a modern type? Always an optimist, I think not; and I notice that the author gives a no less clever and a much more convincing impression of the normal, settled and pleasant characters who are incidental to the plot. Make for yourself the acquaintance of the charming Wilfred Vail and the most amusing and seductive Cockney artiste, Betty Barnfield, and you will admit, however pessimistic your views, that there may be something in mine.