The Ypres Times. 193 Talking of novels, there is not much that is very noteworthy. There is a good deal of clever fiction by clever people, like Mr. Sadleir, and the usual mass of sex-stuff and slobbery sentiment that makes, or ought to make, one sick. But there are also some really good yarns that one can settle into an armchair or into bed and pro ceed to enjoy. Novels where people do something and don't simply talk about themselves and their emotions. I do not find Mr. Zane Gray's style particu larly exhilarating, but at least he doesn't write like the captions of a cinema film. His characters talk at reasonable length, and in the Wild West he finds material for yet another fine story, Wanderer of the Wasteland (7s. 6d. Hodder Stoughton). It is the real thing, with its cowboys and its waste land, and its fighting, its tried heroine, and its human hero, who win out of all snakes to triumph. Best of all, it is full of colour, and has in it the very wind of open spaces, coming like the whip of cold rain into our humdrum existence. Not quite so good, and different, is another Wild West novel, from the same publishers, Copper Streak Trail, by Eugene Rhodes (7s. 6d.), in which a real cowboy, quick on the draw, and untameable as the steers on the ranch, drops into a sleepy, very prim town, miles away from Ari zona. How he upsets that primness makes as laughable a farce as one could wish. More like the cinema is a novel of the thrills of running whisky into dry America. Mr. George Cham berlain's Backhouse (7s. 6d. Tills Boon). If one wants to be kept awake, one cannot do better than get hold of this yarn and read how, under the guidance of a dignified old professor, really the chief of the bootleggers, the hero rides two hundred miles at breakneck speed, in a 12-ton lorry loaded with whisky, through a running fight with countless gunmen bent on stealing his cargo. It is really a fine thriller." The novel of crime and mystery is becoming a little commonplace, but there are still some fair specimens in the bookshop to-day. Two really good novelists have lately gone in for crime work, and this season have given us excellent tales. Mr. Eden Philpotts, in The Red Redmaynes (7s. 6d. Hutchinson), gets three successive murders success fully accomplished, the suspicion of all of them falling on one man. Two detectives set to work, and, though one must not reveal how, track down the mystery. This is as satisfying a mystery tale as has appeared of late, and it is good writing as well. So is Mr. J. S. Fletcher's The Copper Box (7s. 6d. Hodder Stoughton), one of those super-stories which keep one guessing, till, before you realise it, you are at the end. One may re commend it safely as an antidote to any boredom, mental or physical. A woman crook," in high society, is the central character of Miss Law rence's Miss Brandt Adventuress (7s. 6d. Hutchinson), who pits her wits and beauty against a famous detective. How the duel ends and how the lady and her lover, an unconscious accom plice in daring thefts, must be left to the reader to find out at the end of a successful shocker," as successful as the same publishers' The Red Vulture, by Frederick Sleath, or The Blue-Eyed Manchu, by Achmed Abdullah (both 7s. 6d.), in which the mystery of the East casts a weird glamour over two tales of crime. Both are of the breathless type of narrative, that leaves one won dering where time has flown. .There must be others on other shelves, but space will not per mit one to prolong the ramble, but these are not a bad capture for the first one. The Bookworm. NAVY'S GIFT TO THE ARMY. It was announced some weeks ago, in an Army Order, that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, on behalf of the officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, have pre sented to the Army Council a trophy for team competition, with the service rifle for teams from the Regular Army. The trophy consists of a silver replica of the Nelson Column, 3 feet 6 inches in height, on oak base. It has been desig nated The Britannia Trophy." The Army Rifle Association is charged with the custody of the trophy, the drawing up of the conditions of the competition, and the conduct of the competition. The first competition will be held during the Bisley meeting of the Army Rifle Association, in 1923. THE OSWALD FITZGERALD SCHOLARSHIPS. The friends of the late Lieut.-Colonel Oswald Fitzgerald, C.M.G., Personal Military Secretary to Earl Kitchener, who was drowned with his chief, in the loss of H.M.S. Hampshire, have sub scribed a sum of ^2,150 towards a memorial to bear his name. It has been decided to found at Wellington College, where Colonel FitzGerald was educated, two scholarships of ^50 a year for sons of officers in the Army, preference being given to sons of officers of his old regiment, 18th (King George's Own) Lancers, now 19th (King George's Own) Lancers. One FitzGerald scholar is already in residence at Wellington, and it is hoped to appoint a second in the course of this year. H. P. Barbour, D.C.M., ex-Sgt.-Major of the 48th Highlanders, Canada, writes to us, as we go to press, from Ward B3, Brook Street Hospital, Lambeth, S.E. He has only lately arrived in this country and has met with a severe accident, and says how much he would like some of the boys to visit him at Easter.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1923 | | pagina 15