SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1818, 2 August 1913, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

JACK LONDON'S LATEST. Jack London's voyagings.in the South. Seas are bearing rick fruit, for "A'Sou of the Sun",(Mills and Boon; per tieorgo Kobertson and Co.) is the third collection of stories by this author, . which. deal with wild. life in Polynesia and Melanesia, and a fourth collection, "Slnoke Bellew," is sdon to. f0110w.... Mr. .London's work reminds me at:tinles"ot'': that ofsthe late Louis Becko. He may not go so deeply into native ,customs as did - Mr. Becko, but he has. a .greater com mind Of the purely dramatic,'- and .at times is .apt," indeed, to err in his undue su'ggestion-.of the horrible. In all the eight stories, of which the book is composed,-the leading figure is one David Grief, a pearl trader, planter, and daring mariner, who owns plantations, and has trading interests well nigh all over the South Pacific. Averse from shedding blood unnecessarily, honest, according to his lights, but a "hard man," who drives hard bargains, and keeps them himself, and expects others to keep theni to the very letter. Grief is an original and most picturesque character. In these stories of his trading adventures, the dramatic, even the tragic, is mainly prominent, but in two of them, "The Proud Soul of Aloysius Pankburn" and "A Little Account of Switliin Hall," there isatouchof humour which is very welcome. "A Goboto Night," the tale of a savage's vengeance upon two practical jokers, is a study in the frankly horrible, and "Tim Pear,s of Parlay" contains a wonderfully-ofTeotive picture of the South' Sea hurricane at .its worst. "A Son of the Sun" is one of tho strongest and best books that tha clever young American writer has yet produced.

BY/THE AUTHOR OF "QUO VADIS?"

"In Desert and Wilderness," by Henryk Sicnkiewicz (Little, Brown and Co.; per George liobertson and Co.), is a dramatic, .quite, thrilling narrative of the adventures of two European children, an English girl and a young Pole, who are kidnapped by Bedouins, and carried to Khartoum, whoro they arrive shortly after the death of .Gordon," and the capture of the city by'the Mahdi. The young I'ole is a plucky lad, and when tlie captives are sent'further south, to Fashoda, lie succeeds in escaping with his young charge, the .pair then making their ivav, accompanied by", a faithful little negro boy, th rough Equatoria to the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro,-where they are met and conducted safely to Mombasa'by some European friends of, their parents. The author of "Quo Vadis?" has written a story of vivid local colour, and the narrative generally is tightly packed with thrilling adventures. Incidentally, the story jtfves a very readable and instructive description of Hie state the. Soudan and the Equatorial provinces were in previous to the British conquest. Although not ostensibly intended; for juyenilo consumption, "In: D&sert and Wilderness", is a story which :should vastly delight-both youthful and adult readers. A fine photogravure portrait of the clever Polish author makes an interesting frontispiece.

G. B. LANCASTER'S LATEST,

G. B. Lancaster" is the nom-do-phime of a Isew- Zealand lady who has rapidly como to the front of Oat© as a novelist, ihc author of "SorL3 of Men" and "Tho Spur now gives her admirers in "Tire Law B ringers (Hodder and Stoughton) a long, vworonsly-written stry, in which the two leading characters, once rivals, now meals, ara members of that splendid force,'the lioyal North-west Mounted I'ohcc of Canada. The siene fs the far li'oivh-nest of Canada, in tho territory tenanted only bv trappers," fur-traders, Indians and half-breeds, which runs either siiow-cI«ul wtistc or forest right np to Hudson's Bay. Miss Lancaster has been living in Canada for some time pn»st, and must have gone to special pains to got up- her local colour, which is vividly picturesque, and most effectively used. Into the lives of raoli of the two men, Corporal Dick He,riot and Sergeant George Tempest, there enters -the combined influence of two women, one, Jennifer Dueane, the wife of a handsome but brutal trader Dueane; the other, Aiulroo Gramre, tile half-breed daughter of .1 backwoods liquor shanty-keener. Most ingeniously interwoven with the two men's duties as police ofilecrs are certain interests in which both Jennifer and Andree are concerned. Dueane and Iris partner, a halfbreed named Robison, are suspected of engaging in a vast swindling enterprise connected with tho sale of Indian land concessions. To get at the truth Heriot makes love to Andreo, who Ims completely fascinated Robison, an<l the girl betrays the two swindlers. But Tempest, too. is passionately in love with the half-breed beauty, a treacherous, openly sensual creatu.ro, and this complicates matters for Dick, his friend. To trace in full the tangled plot of (he story would tako too much space, but 'the climax comes when Ileriot, whom Andree has non' come to love as sho lias never loved a man before, is told oif by the Commissioner to hunt the girl down, on a ckarco of niurdor. Duty has to bo

obeyed, niul Heriot starts in on tho long trail, wliiob. takes him to tho farthest north, whero Andreo has taken refuge on a sealing vessel. On the way tack to civilisation she wheedles him into a decision ito desert, and, forgetting Jennifer, to make for tho far away Klondyko with tho beautiful but treacnerous creature who has tow beguiled him out of his honour. Hov, after all, that honour is not lost, how Jennifer is ridded of Ducano, nnd Dick comes to marry her, I must not say. All this »u must read for yourselves. 'The Law aringers" is a most striking and dramatic story. The Kipling influence, the 'glorification <?£ physical and mental virilitj-, tho worship of the "strong, men of the wild," is still an obsession with' Miss Lancaster. But tho story, although a triflo too long,, is in many ways a fine piece of literary craftmanship. It is assuredly the best 6tory of Canadian life that has been published; this many a day. SHORTER NOTICES,

"I'd Venture all for Thee," by J. S. Fletcher (George Bell and Sons; per Whitcombe.and Tombs) is a well-written romance of the middlo period of the eighteenth century with the Yorkshire coast as a background. ! A young Scots lord, with a price on his head, meets with a-, long series of exciting adventures in his disguise as a cattle driver, but in tile end there is a pardon and a marriage—with the traditionally "lovely maiden." Although not altogether free from a touch of melodrama. "I'd Venture all for Theo" is not a bad samplo ot its class.

In "Tho Arnold Lip," by C. E. Lawrence (John Murray, per "WluWombo and lornbs), wo. aro treated to some im tooling 1 , with just sufficient undercurrent of gravity to save the story from being farcical. comedy.. The. hero, Hush Arnold, is the eldest eon of a prosperous I stockbroker who worships devotedly at the shrine of Respectability, and is never ?°,," a PPy he is denouncing ev-c-ry Ja/tteixiay idea and movement as anarchical or eulogising tlio ability and virtues of his family, the great Arnold ianiLiy. Ihe 90a sickens .of smug comlort, and rebels against parental pomposity and the family legend. At first, rather inclined to priggishness, he quickly broadens his view of life, and in the end saves the family from crushing duster. Mr. Lawrerfee is rather too anxious to be satirical at any cost, and more than one of his characters verge upon caricature. But for the most , part the "Arnold Lip" provides some very agreeable entertainment.

Helen Wallace's storv, "jrorning Glory (Oassell and Co., per S. W. ■Mackay), is a variation on the old theme of an .innocent, wife suspected by her husband of wrong-doing, and of her i.n.TMconoe being established too lato for the husband to repair the evil ho has dor.e by casting her aside. In this cape tho husband., Sir Dudley Stonor. is a dreadfully pricrgish person, but there is strong presumptive evidence against the wife, who i,s pitifullv unlucky all through. Her father, a selfish old major, is not illdrawn, but for the most part tho characterisation is weak.

Morire Gerard's novel, "The Mystery Car" (Hodder and Stough'ton), is a skilful compound of the sensational and the sSntimental. Lord Straffer corner to the rescue of Claries Montanet, and rescues her from a Hebraic M.P., who is a thorough-paced ra=cal, and is instrumental in preventing the girl, whom, of course, ho eventually lnaTrics. from being robbedof a valuable mine, which, slie has inherited in Cornwall. The story goes with a good swing throughout.