SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1800, 12 July 1913, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"THE MIDLANDERS." "Tho Midlanders," by Charles Tenney Jackson (Bobbs, Merrill Co.; per George Robertson and Co.) is a. new American novel which it has been a pleasure to read and which I i'eel it a duty to recommend. Tho opening scenes.aro laid in Louisiana, in tho swamp lands alongside tho (Treat Mississippi, but the heroine, a young girl, who is kidnapped from a convent by two rough, but kindly-hearted, men. is taken, after a time, to a little backward, old-fashioned country town in the Middle Western State of lowa. With French blood-'in her veins, nnd on her mother's side, and a religious faith which has but few followers in tho littlo town of Home (Rome, Iowa!), Aurelie grows up into a handsome, but wild, emotional creature. Then comes a lover in the person of tho son of Judgo Van Hart. The Van Hart family object to Aurelie, whose pOTtrait, published unknown to its original, has been sent in to a Chicago newspaper which has started a beauty competition, and who now becomes a celebrity. Her lover goes to the university. and Aurelie to a carcer on tho stage. The love story ends happily, as all love stories should do, but the special merit of "Tlie Midlanders" lies in its intimate pictures of life in the little town of Rome; the ambitions, political, and others, of its local editor—a character worthy of Mark Twain—the feud of a half-mad Scandinavian against Judgo Van Hart; local graft—graft seems inseparable from an American novel—and the hundred and one small social events and sensations of the place. There is some excellent comedy in the story, with an occasional dash of Jho dramatic; and although it is a story, jnoro'for. leisurely than rapid perusal; it is so full of good wholesome humour, and so rich in effective character sketches, that it is bound fto win many admirers. I can cordially commend "The Midlanders." "OUTLAW'S LUCK." Last year there appeared a rather curious, but very clever, book, a compound of adventure nnd wildly extravagant fancy, entitled "Tho Little Blue Devil." Miss Dorothea M'Kellar, one of tho two collaborating authors of tho novel just mentioned, now conies forward on her own account as the author of a sprightly and quito likeable story of life ill the Argentine, in ■ Uruguay ' and Texas, entitled "Outlaw's Luck" (Mills and Boon;- per George Robertson and Co.). The : chief figure is a young Englishman of good family, Christian Prevost, popularly known to tho English settlers m "Kid," to the Spanish and half-castes as El Chico. Kid Prevost is, I grieve to say, a professional liorse-stealer, a dangerous occupation in tho Argentine, as, indeed, it is anywhere in tho more sparsely settled districts of South America. He is a young man of engaging manners, and a perfect "devil of a fellow" amongst the ladies. How El Chico, to protect himself, kidnaps a young English girl, but treats her as politely as Claude Duval is credited by the writers of ' "High- Toby" literature with treating the fair ladies ho robbed with such a gentlemanly air; how, resolving to forswear horse-stealing and "tho cards," he leaves Sou.th America and settles in Texas; how ho is encountered by an old .rival, who threatens exposure, and of what happens to the latter; and how El Chico ends up by marrying a New York young lady, and of what afterwards befel] .'his interesting pair I must'not tell in detail. You must read all this for yourselves in Miss Mackellar's lively and well-written story. I am not quito suro that El Chico's cared 1 points a very edifying moral, but its relation makes a vastly amusing story. TWO CANADIAN STORIES. More and more is life in th? Oversea Dominions of tho Empire finding reflection in fiction. ; Before me to-day are two -novels, one quite noticeably well written, the other- somewhat amateurish as to style, but not for that reason to be deemed negligible, and both dealing with life in Canada. ' The first,. "The Bluo Wolf," by W. Lacey Amy (Hodder and Stoughton; per P. and W. Mackay) is described on the title page as n "Tale of the Cypress Hills," and 011 tho cover as "A .Thrilling Love Romance of an Alberta Prairie Ranch" In a way, Mr. Amy's story belongs to tho. "shocker" class; but it is an exceedingly well wrought story, in which one of the ugliest of human passions, to wit, jealous}-, impels a quite decent fel-' low to a series of crimes, of which convenient cireumstanco and the superstition of his neighbours for a time prevent the discovery. The author strains probability, if not possibility, in making the chief actor in the drama, which is played out at his lonely ranch, able not only to imitate the weird cry of a. wolf, but to project that cry over a distance of some miles'. _ But he deserves every credit for inventing an ingenious plot, and still greater commendation for the strength and reality of his characters. The halfmad Maskm, head of a fanatical sect, The Dreamers—fictional first cousins to the much-discussed Douikliobours—is a weirdly fascinating figure. "The 13hin Wolf" U a highly dramatic and decidedly original storv. 111 "Tho.Great Gold Rush, a Tale of the Klondyke" (John Murray: per Whitcombe and Tombs), Mr„ W. IT. P. .Tarvis, whose "Letters of a Remittance Man," may be remembered by some of my readers, relates the adventures, both 011 the way (0 the famous Dawson City, and 011 the Klondyke gold rush of 18!I8, of two youii" men, Canadian miners from British Columbia, who are the slauncliest and most loyal of mates. Mr. .Tarvis gives a very detailed description of the trip, via Skagway and the famous White Pass route, to Dawson. On Klondyke the adventurers strike a rich patch, but for a limn af least are robbed of their just reward through tho rascality of a gang of "grafters" whom the Canadian Gold Commissioner, himself an honest man, is nubble to keep, in check. Tho result is a second and mild edition of the Eureka Stockade incident, bloodshed only being avoided by the clever device of a constable who, bv cunningly spreading the report of an enormously rich new field, lures away the majority of the revolting miners. There is a subsidiary love interest, but it. is very thin, and might . wall havo been omitted altogether. A3 a

series of pictures of the-Klondyke in its palmy days, tho story is well wortli reading. Shorter Notices. Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle are practised and skilful coucocters of fiction in which adventure is a leading feature, and their "Chance the Piper" (Macmillan. and Co.) is a collection of stories which are decidedly readable. Although they can bo read separately, tho stories aro linked together in a way by the fact that in most of them the element of Chance, if you like, Coincidence, is strongly represented. For the most part, they deal with gay and spirited adventure, but in two at least, "The Moon Gibbet" as weirdly powerful a short story as 1 have read for some time, and in "The Death Hussar" thero is a severely tragic note. In one or two of tho others the sprightliness and gaiety of tho style pleasantly recalls Stevenson's work. There is some excellent reading in "Chance the Piper." Indeed, the motif of more than one story is so ingenious that one feels grateful to the authors at their having resisted tho temptation, to which many contemporary novelists would have succumbed, of padding what is a short, crisp story into a noyel of the regulation length. "The Temptation of Tavernake," by E. Phillips Oppenheim (Hodder and Stoughton, per S. and W. Mackay), is, though highly sensational, much better planned, and contains some moro strongly-drawn characters than do most stories in tho same genre. Tavornako is a young London business man, taciturn, reserved, but strong-willed and straight-going, who befriends and falls in love with a young American girl whom he meets at a Bloonisbury boardinghonse. The girl's elder sister is an adventuress, an accomplice of a band of Yankee "crooks,"'and for a time both Tavemake and the younger woman have a very bad time of it, for Beatrice's honesty is a dire offence to the sister with file lurid past and the equally objectionable present, and her lover finds that even unconsciously to thwart a gang of expert swindlers is not unattended by great danger. Needless, however, to say.-.vthe conclusion finds virtue triumphant and villainy, if not exactly vanquished, at least very much down at heel. Really a capital story in its own class. "Maker of Ware," hy Spenier Edge (Cassell and Co.; per S. and W. Mackay), is a good average "mystery story," tho interest turning 011 the supposed murder of a lady, tho wife of a struggling young pottery manufacturer, and tho subsequent theft of .£SOOO in notes. The author exhibits decided ingenuity in hid-, ing the identity of the real thief, and in throwing suspicion of murder—as a matter of fact, - tho poor lady's death was purely accidental—upon some quite estimablo people. Readable enough in spare hours on steamer or train. The two leading figures in Mr. Uothwell Haig's novel, "ICynaston's Wife" (George Bell and Sons; per Whitcombe and Tombs),are James Kynaston, tho "Diamond King," a South African millionaire, and Lady Barbara Carshalton, only daughter of a disreputable old peer, who is detected and exposed as a cardsharper, and who is genorally a most unwholesome person. Kynaston, a strongwilled honest colonial, falls in love with Lady Barbara, and saves her father from a criminal prosecution. Tho millionaire marries the lady, and, for a time, all goes well, for tho husband slowly but surely wins/the woman's lovo. Then comes jealousy, of an old lover of the lady, and through tho mischief-making of a cattish third party. Zoo Halliday, trouble, and almost a complete rupture.' How husband and wifo emerge from a situation both delicate and dangerous is;very cleverly worked out by tho author. ' A lost memory provides the key to the plot of "Love Conquers All Things," by Arthur Applin (Ward, Lock, and Co.; per S. and W. Mackay). When Sir George Hethcrington returns to England from a ; long sojourn abroad, a motor-car, is sent to meet him. Later on tho car is found with the chauffeur lying dead beside it, and Sir George, or some one who is supposed to be Sir George, not far away, with a terrible wound at the back of his ■head.- Upon th' s : incident Mr. Applin founds a most complicated and ingeniously devised plot. • - t .In "A' Master, of Deception" (Cassell and Co.; per Whitcombe and Tombs), Mr. Richard Marsh is hardly so successful as usual. Tho chief character, a young man who is a liar and a thief from his youth up, ends by coming very near to being a deliberate murderer, and that the author finally allows him to escapo unpunished, save by loss of fortune, has been to 0110 reader at least rather disappointing. The three lady loves of this young gentleman—he is engaged to nil three at onco—are either atrociously vulgar or irrepressibly silly. Mr. Marsh has done much better things than ."A Master of Deception."