SHORTER NOTICES.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2384, 13 February 1915, Page 5

SHORTER NOTICES.

,"Oeek, of Scotland Yard," byT. W. Eanshaw (Doubleday, Page and Co., per George Robertson and Co.), is a welltold "detective story," or series of stories, in which an almost supeiuaturally gifted detective, I bog paidon, crimc investigator,' is the chief figure. Ihe stoiy has been utilised for kinematograph purposes, and I should not be surprised to hear, that the "movies come first and the story second. It really matters little which was the case, for the adventures of that remarkable genius, "The Man of Forty Faces, once known to the police as "'the Vanishing Cracksman," make good enough reading for an idle hour or two. The story is illustrated from photographs' of the "motion pictures," which have been suggested by the story—or which suggested it!

In Annie S. Swan's latest novel, "Meg Hamilton" (Hodder and Stoughtcn), the author breaks what js for her new ground. The secondary title of her story is "An Ayrshire Romance," the principal characters being a Scottish landowner, a country squire, who bets not wisely but too well, and his daughter, who finds that lier father's financial embarrassments sadly interfere with her own ideas as to marriage and life generally. Miss Swan may, lam afraid, -startle not a little her usual public by tho experiences she allots her heroine, but the sentimentally inclined should find the story vastly to -their liking, and from Miss S.wan's ordinary admirers thero is not likely, I fanc.v, to be much grumbling as to improbabilities, so long as the romantic flavour is constantly preserved. <

It turns out that Miss 'Annie Topham, whose "Memories of the Kaiser's Court," published in September last, created some sensation, is the author of a book,. "Daphne in the Fatherland, 1 published anonymously a year or so ago. The author was for some years English governess to the Kaiser's daughter, now the Duchess of Brunswick.

The Autobiography of S'. S._ M'Cluie (of M'Clure's Monthly), has just been published by Murray's. M'Clure was the original, in part. at least, of that vastly amusing character in "The Wrecker," the ingenious. Jim Pinkerton. "Sam" M'Clure —ho was always (outside "The Wreckeor") "Sam" to 11.L.S. —tells us ho has been .a schoolmaster, a printer's devil, a butoher, a .ship's steward, and various other things but it was as a publisher that he "maao good." "The one thing,"' he tells us, "that this magazine won't stand is profanity.". He even tried to blue-pencil Kipling's copy. How Stevenson would have enjoyed M'Clure's book.