Seventeen dramatic short stories by the author of “Uncle Abner.” The settings in these stories are selected from many fascinatingly remote, and also familiar places. In the title story the action takes place at Port Said, a refuge for human derelicts, “the devil’s halfway house,” where through cleverly playing upon a guilty man’s fear of the supernatural, a dying sculptor gets money enough to die in the way it pleases him. “The great legend,” narrated by a semi-French, semi-oriental gentleman sitting beside a fire made of bleached bones, on an undulating, moonlit desert of sand, takes us to the underworld of Paris. “The miller of Ostend” is a tale of Belgium. “The pacifist” is a story of the United States and a German spy. Other titles are: The laughter of Allah; The witch of the Lecca; The new administration; The Baron Starkheim.
“Though somewhat overdramatic and artificial, the plots are clever and interesting.”
+ − Booklist 16:246 Ap ’20 + Dial 68:537 Ap ’20 40w
“The stories are well told and the people have much more character and individuality than is usual among inhabitants of mystery tales.”
+ Ind 103:322 S 11 ’20 140w
“They have variety and freshness, and, if occasionally overemphasized, they are never trite.”
+ − N Y Times 25:191 Ap 18 ’20 40w
“In the matter of untangling a crime or running a mystery to its lair Melville Davisson Post can give even the immortal Holmes himself quite a brush. His latest collection in no way falls short of the Uncle Abner tales.” E. C. Webb
+ Pub W 96:1694 D 27 ’19 240w