“The ‘messages’ have no evidential value whatever—there is not a single test of ‘identity.’ There are vastly more verbal expressions than thoughts expressed. Is it not safe to assume that the central element in the treatise, the love of God, is part of the author’s conception of Christianity, and that the ‘messages’ simply are subconscious elaborations of her mind? Everything points in that direction.”
− Cath World 111:552 Jl ’20 550w
Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow
− Dial 69:208 Ag ’20 290w
“The messages are expressed with simplicity and clarity and reveal ardent spiritual aspiration.”
+ N Y Times 25:18 Jl 4 ’20 200w
MCFADDEN, GERTRUDE VIOLET. Preventive man. *$1.75 Lane
20–8449
A story of smuggling on the Dorset coast a century ago. The “preventive man,” in the vernacular of the time, is a government agent, who comes into the neighborhood to run down the law breakers. In truth however, he is less interested in the smuggling than in his own more weighty private concerns, for he has reason to believe that his loved brother has met foul play in this very community. By a trick he gains admittance into the house of Simeon Coffin, the miser, and begins to gather the evidence that confirms his suspicions. At first he associates Simeon’s niece, Horatia, with the crime and attributes her confusion—which is really due to the possession of a piece of smuggled silk—to her guilt. She is cleared in his eyes however and he is ready enough to atone for her suffering and his cruelty.