SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1895, 1 November 1913, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

REX BEACH'S LATEBT. Rex Beach has roturned to his first love, that Alaskan background before which he has worked out so many dramatic 'happenings for the pleasure of his readers. "The Net" was not a bad story, although, to my mind, Marion Crawford's pictures of the Mafia wore more convincing, and in "The Ne'er do Well," the Panama scenes were excellent. But the author of "The Barrier," "The Spoilers," and "The Silver Horde" is always at his best when describing the rough lives and primitive passions of tho miners, trappers, and pioioers of that grimly fascinating country, Alaska. In his latest story, "Tho Iron Trail" (Hodder and Stougnton; per S. W. Mackay and Whitcombe and Tombs)', Mr. Beach returns to the scene of .his earlier successes, and gives us a really fine novel, possessing a dramatic plot, some vividly picturesque local colour and strong characterisation and some pretty love-making, the whole being narrated in. that direct vigorous style which marked its predecessors. Murray O'Neill, tho engineer and railway speculator, who builds a railway which his rivals consider an impossibility, makes a fine hero, and the story of his varied fortunes in the carrying out of his project makes excellent reading. He thotoughly deserves his good luck in carrying a risky project to a successful conclusion, and in winning the hand of the equally plucky Miss Appleton. The story is brim-ful of exciting incidents, and contains also some eloquent descriptions of tho wild but impressive scenic wonders of the A'askan region. "The Iron Trail" should vastly pleaso tho Beach public, which, as the author probably know;s full well, through the medium of his "royalties" account, includes a numer-* ous and faithful audience in New Zealand. MR OPPENHEIM'S "THE MISCHIEF MAKER."

Mr. C. Phillip Oppenheim, the author of "The Mischief Maker " (Ilodder and Stoughton; per Whitcombe and Tombs and S; and W. Mackay) is specially successful with a Parisian background, and in his latest story cleverly introduces quite a number of more or less prominent foatures of present-day Parisian life. The plot turns upon the efforts of a British statesman, who has fallen into disgrace and has had to resign his position, partly through a momentary folly, flud partly the ambition and treachery, of a lady acquaintance, to re-establish his reputation as being the one Englishman who can outwit a deep hid German plot to break down the entente cordialo with France. Mr. Oppenheim is dariDg enough to make no less a personage than a German Chancellor, the Prince Von Falkenburg, masquerade in Paris as Herr Freudenborg, a wealthy manufacturer of toys, who moves about t'lie gay city secretly undeimining British influence, corrupting French statesmen and journalistseven Socialist journalists—and, in par T ticular,-attempting to win over the support of the one man who, he knows, can thwart lis schemes. This man, of course, is the temporarily discredited British ex-Miaister. Sir Julieri Portel. The story has a strikingly original plot, in the working out of winch Mr. Oppenheim exhibits oven more than his customary ingenuity, and- although tlio stage is cro.vded with characters, and one dramatic incident succeeds another so rapidly, the story is always direct and effective. The denouement, which restores the ex-Minister to. a ■ position of honour and confidence and incidentally gives him a charming bride, is very ingeniously worked out. Altogether a very exciting and welltold story, which, however one may question! the .'probability .of its- foremost incidents, is eminently readable from the first to tlhb last of its threehundred and odd pages. : r '.

"A MERE WOMAN." Vera Nikto, the author of "A Mere "Woman" (Duckworth and Co.; per George Robertson and Co.).has written a clever novel which, however, in places leaves a rather nasty taste. Her heroine a Russian-born daughter of a German baron, is called Sonia—when will the novelists remember that every Russian lady is not named Sonia?—and is married, at seventeen, to an officer in a Cossack regiment, Pelenka Sokoloff, who gambles and drinks, and treats his young wife with studious cruelty. So Sonia gets a divorce, and at twenty is free to wed again, which she soon does, her'second husband being the .rich and elderly Prince Tomilin. In the interim, however, she has tad a " love passage,' with a handsome young officer, Colonel Orloff, a bold and bad young man, jyhomight nave stepped out of one of Elinor Glynn's delectable compositions. The young wife bears her elderly hushand a son, and lias settled down to domesticity when Orloff reappears and endeavours to induce her to leave her husband. The moral' nature of tho woman has by this time been so strengthened that slie refuses, and the handsome but now despairing Orloff shoots himself in the garden outsidetho room where husband and wife are playing chess. The story reads in places as if it had been translated from the French. Its flavour is decidedly foreign, but it contains many well-drawn characters, one of the weakest being, oddly the heroine herself. DAPHNE IN PARIS. "Daphne in Paris," by the author of "Daphne in the Fatherland" (Andrew Melrose, per George Robertson and Co.), is a piquant and decidedly amusing, if rather "frothy," bit of light comedy. The heroine, a 3'oung English lady who is engaged to a handsome young officer, is taken to Paris by her aristocratic relations in the hope that she may forget her fiancee, whom they consider a poor match, and marry either an extremely _ eligible' British duke', or perhaps, failing that gentleman, one of her nobly born French, connections. The story, however, is a mere excuse and medium for the heroine's amusing comments upon Parisian and provincial life. The French stage, French racing and le sport generally,' French duels, - and last but not least, the" charming "confcctions"of the fashionable modistes of the Rue de la Paix, are all the subject of witty and entertaining descriptions. There is, however, an undue surplusage of marquises, viscounts, and their wives—and lady friends, of the fashionablo and "half world" —and the French expressions with which tho narrative is so richly bolarded leave, sometimes, not a little' to be desired both as to grammar and spelling. The story is brightly written, recalling some of Elinor Glyn's efforts in the same genre, but personally I prefer Constance Maud's pictures of French society to those of tho author of "Three Weeks," and the anonymous creator of the fair but flirtatious Daphne.

SHORTER NOTICES. L_ A weird yet curiously fascinating story is that told by Mrs. S R. Schfiold in "I Don't Know'' (Duckworth and Co.; per George Robertson and Co.). It is a story of a transferred personality, reminding one, at a distance, of one of Thcopbile Gautier's strange fantasies. Two- men are saved from a shipwreck. One, the captain, a clem-living, honest, decent fellow, dies—that is to say bis body dies ■~-t'ho other, a sensual idler, given to drink and drugs, and all sorts of abominations, survives—that is to say his body survives. But tho soul in tho saved body is that of tho dead captain, and as the survivor returns to his wife, an interesting and very curious psychological problem is oreated. focm-

ing the motif of a story which' is of a decidedly unusual and, in its chief incidents, curiously fascinating character. As a distin3t change from every-day fiction "I Don't Know" is well worth reading. ' It is some time since I read ft novel by Warwick Deeping, whose "Rust of Rome" and "The Red Saint" will be pleasantly remembered by many of my readers. Mr. Deeping now gives us, in "The White Gate" (Oassell and Co.; per S. W. Mackay) an agreeably written story of present-day English lifo, tho heroine being the daughter of a frivolous and selfish mother who is not received in county society. FortunStely for Connie Brent, sho finds a faithful friend, who later on develops into an ardent lover and loyal husband, in a clever inventor, who comes down to the village to work out the plans of a wonderful new electrical discovery. After tho pair are married the scene changes vo tho Riviera, where Mr. Deeping proves himself just as much athome as in an English rural environment. A pleasant, restful story is "The White Gate/' with many slyly satirical hits at the British snob, both male and female, of the present day.

The author of those capital novels. "The- Fortunes of Christina M'Nab" and "A Lame Dog's Diary," could not well be dull if she wished. Misß Maci naughtan's latest story, " Snow upon the Desert" (Hodder and Stoughton; per Whitcombe and Tombs ohd S. W. Mackay) contains several well-drawn characters, notably a flirtatious AngloIndian lady, and a very charming ingenue heroine, who, after going through some sad trials, losing both father and fortune—the latter, however, only' temporarily—is happily married to a very [oily and honest young aide-de-camp. The Indian background suggests an inside knowledge of Anglo-Indian life, and, needless to say the dialogue, as in Miss Macnaughtan's earlier books, is brightly written and entertaining, Three recent additions to Bell's Colonial Library (per Whitcombe and Tombs) are "Seen in tho Shadow" by Fergus Hume; " Tho Unguarded Hour, by Lady Troubridge; and "The Granite Cross," by Mrs. Fred Reymlds. All three are readable novels, Mrs. Reynolds's story pleasine me most. It possesses a picturesque Cornish background. A fisher lad is the hero. He has some talent for painting, and is "discovered" by a London artist-, fascinates a fashionable young" lady and becomes, for a time, of the world, most worldly. But it is to his beloved "Duchy" that he finally returns, as do, or would fain do, all good Cornishmen. " The Unguarded Hour " is a readable society novel, not the best its prolific author has written, but readable enough in its way. Hero and heroine have their misunderstandings, troubles, and woes, but in the end " it was a new world to which Gloria's oyes opened; a new life to which she pledged herself as his lips rested on hers."