SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 193, 10 May 1919, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION.

".The Land of the Big Things."

Owen I'elers, the hero of Leslie Gordon's highly-sensational, but well-written new story, of "the wild, and woollv West," "Tho Land of t'ae Big Things" (Ilodder and Rtongliton), is an, lioncst man, who, through-sheer ill-luck is transformed into a "crook." After it meteoric criminal career in York he finds it desirable to seek a- cli»n?e of scene, and returns to his nntive AVcst, where he bocomes, partly ■ through fate, partly ns the result, of'-the dominant suggestion of a long-hidden inner streak of .honesty and ohivalry, the friend, guardian, nnd eventually the lover of a linlf-in'nnp old w«•peotor's beautiful daughter. The search for a hidden gold mine, the breaking up of ft. gang of gamblers, horse thieves, and "bad men" generally and other sensational doings, are responsible/for much revolver firing, and dramatic incidents generally. Tho story is much on tho same lines ns Mr. Gordon's yerv successful "Little Lady of the Shot Gun/' anil altlioudi. wrhnus, iuiggeslive or, .reminiscent of 1.-inomnto-graphic production, having the "Wild West ait a background, includes tome exceptionally strong character, drawing, which rinses it .well'.above_ tile level of" ttie class of fiction to.which it belongs. Mr. Pett Ridge Once Again.

As a humorist, or, perhaps I should any, a good-humoured satirist of the manners and customs of lower and middleclass English society, Mr.. W. -Pett Eidge is. in the front rank of British novelists. It must be. n good many years ago since. Mr. Pett Eidge wrote that delightfully funny study of. n young London carman of Socialistic tendencies, the immortal "Erb," but he has never given us. a dull tiook, and even at his second best never fails to amuse us. In "Splendid Performances" (Mothuen and Co.); Mr. Eidge gives us no fewer than eighteen separate short stories orsketolies, in one, and all of which we find the same quiet but wholesome humour .and good-natured satire of so many volumes which liavo carried his name on their,title pages. "Whether.Mr. Eidge ho describing how the petty meanness und.greed of the relatives of a dead woman are successfully countered v by the adroitness of the old lady's faithful old servant, or recounting the love passages of an astute Cockney maiden with, respectively, a niild young curate and a-.selfish but smart young Hebrew moneylender; whether his hero be" a board-school teacher or a, "young man in 'the City"; whether his heroines belong to tiie higlily "genteel"" class which lives in a suburb a little further out than other suburbs, and which, therefore, looks down on the vosidents of less fashionable neighbourhoods as "110 class" or "common": or whether, on the other hand, they be admittedly nnd cheerfully of tho no-called "110 class" .variety—and proud of it—Mr. Eidge hits off their fads; foibles, and occasional frivolities in a spirit of good-humoured satire. tin occasions, too, he can strike a note of genuine pathos none the' less effective' in- that it is unforced. Personally. I prefer Mr. Eidge, in a long 'story,'hut we.must tako him ns we find him, and in small doses lie is, to "Liber" at least, almost as welcome as in his more prolonged and ambitious efforts.