“Discriminating and valuable selection of stories.” A. C. Moore
+ Bookm 52:260 N ’20 60w Boston Transcript p4 O 23 ’20 350w + Springf’d Republican p8 N 18 ’20 150w
SHEEHAN, PERLEY POORE. House with a bad name. *$1.90 Boni & Liveright
The house was an anachronism in a part of New York that had fallen from a former grand estate. The neighborhood would have it that it was haunted. The people living in it were anachronisms and as such full of mystery. Old Nathan Tyrone and his daughter Mélissine lived in an older generation in thought, in dress, in habits. They were paragons of virtue and unworldliness, and their butler a good second to themselves. In due time Mélissine falls in love, and, about the same time, an evil woman appears upon the scene with blackmail and corruption. After the death of Mélissine’s father she insinuates herself into the house and for a time the air is dense with mystery and evil forebodings. But before so much virtue and saintliness even the wicked Belle becomes repentant and the evil mysteries she conjured up fade away. All but one, which comes to light after Mélissine’s marriage: through some estrangement between her father and grandfather, the former had been disinherited and had unwittingly been living on the bounty of the butler, the sole heir, all his life.
Boston Transcript p3 D 4 ’20 480w
“Mr Sheehan is a facile, delicate artist in the weaving of such a theme; the texture of it is excellent and his people, especially the two women, are admirably real.”
+ N Y Evening Post p11 N 27 ’20 150w
“With a slight, old-fashioned plot, little dramatic action and characters that have been worn threadbare, it still must be conceded that the lazy reader, desiring mild bookish entertainment, will find it worth while to work his way through this placid novel.”
+ − N Y Times p26 Ja 2 ’21 420w