SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 2456, 8 May 1915, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"THE BLIND SPOT." Mr. Justin Miles Forman, the author of "The Blind Spot" (Ward, Loclt and Co.; per Whitcombe and Tombs), can generally be depended upon for a wellplanned, well-told story, but in this, his latest novel, he is hardly as successful as -usual in securing and maintaining the reader's interest. The scene of the story, is New York, the time the present day, the tliree leading characters being Linda Grey, a young lady of wealth and good social position, and two men, one, Arthur Stone, a popular political leader, who would fain be a- great social reformer, and a young society man, Coppy Latimer, who leads an idle, purposeless existence, and threatens, when the story begins, to drift into a life of reckless dissipation. The odds are at first strongly in favour of Stone, who interests the girl in his reform schemes, and impresses her ivith a sense of his strength of will and stability of character. But as the story develops it becomes clear that Stone is too cold, too obsessed with the idea that the world must be made "efficient" even at the expense of human sympathy and love, and in the end it is the weaker man who wins by sheer force of the depth_ of his attachment. Mr. Formaii has evidently gone to much pains to make us understand the reasoning of such a rnirid as Stone's, and his pictures of New York public life are 110 doubt very faithfully drawn. But. the reformer's bermoriisings and speeches weary one in time, and the author fails to convince the reader of his reality. Linda Grey is a delightful heroine, ami the old lady who bluntly tells Stine thai to exclude lov-6 as on**

of the great factors in life is a grave description of tho error, is a charactor for whom ovory reader of the book must havo a true affection. A feature of the story is tho part, plaved by tho objcctionablo alio" elemont which gives so much trouble to the Now York police. "AN EMPEROR IN THE DOCK." A few months ago there was reviewed in this journal a rather striking story or life in Java, entitlod "Battle Royali the author being a Dutch writer, Jr. Willim de Veer. In l.is new story. An Emperor in the Dock" (John Lane), Mr. de Veer loavos the East far behind mm Mid gives us a highly sensational but, ingeniously contrived plot, the central iieuro in which is 110110 other than the haughty War Lord of the Hohenzollerus. On Board a Dutch-owned yacht are, as guests, an American and two young Englishmen, the latter hurrying, home from Norway to enlist, the American on his way to Franco to join tiie Foreign Legion. The crew of the Oornelia is mainly Dutch, but includes one merman, through whose machinations the yacht soon gets into, troubls. ExacUy how it'comes about it would be unfair to the author to say, but two other Germans are taken on board, one, admittedly a Count, the other a mysterious being who is treated by his rescued comrade with almost servile deference. Soon commences a series of most, extraordinary happenings on the Oornena, scenes of treachery and bloodshed, the crowning sensation being the placing or the mysterious stranger, none other than the Most Honourable ana HighBorn Highly-to-be-Esteemea (etc., etc.;, the Kaiser himself, at the bar of She nations, the verdict being—well, for that, end the denouement of the tragedy, or comedy, for it savours of both, I must refer you to the book itself. The story is a forcible indictment of the Kaiser as an enemy to civilisation and humanity, the author making it clear where his own sympathies lie by dedicating) "to all who believe that in international politics honour and justice are as essential as in private life, thi6 parable of a haughty Emperor reduced to normal dimensions." It is highly improbable, I should say, that any German translation of the story will appear—not at least until the war is over. Meanwhile, the British reader should find it greatly to his taste. "RED HAIR." As a 6eries of pictures of life in the rather gloomy and sordid atmosphere of what was once known as "Merry Islington," but which has, so I believe, become a quarter of London m which "mean streets" are all too numerous, Mr. .Robert Halifax s story, "lied Hair" (Methuen and Co.), possesses no small merit. Mr. Halifax is, perhaps, more akin in his style to Mr. Fett Kidge than Air. Arthur Morrison in that he tinctures his realism with a larger dose of happy and wholesome humour than was perceptible lit 'A Child of the J ago," or in Mr. Morneon's shorter studies, "Tales of JVlean Streets." His heroine is & young factory "hand," the flamboyant ruddiness of whose locks makes her the butt of her 'companions. But "carrots are not so uncommon a feature m Cockney girls as to make Mr. Halifax's description of poor Kate Whirl's almost morbid sensitiveness to the taunt of "Ginger" quite convincing. The love story of the girl with a lodger in her fosterfather's house is, however, worked out with much skill, and for two characters alone, the prying, bitter-tongued, and evil-minded woman who does her utmost to embitter the heroine's life, and the bibulous but mean old retired master builder, Mr. Bastable —quite a Dickensian figure—the story is well worth reading. The minor characters are 60 well and strongly drawn that it seems a pity that Kate's lover, a religious zealot,