THE LATEST NOVELS

Southland Times, Issue 24227, 10 September 1940, Page 3

THE LATEST NOVELS

Prairie Farmer MARGINAL LAND. By Horace Kramer.’ Robert Hale, London, through Whitcombe and Tombs. Price 9/6 net. The most interesting novels now being written in America are those which depict the early struggles between the settlers and the land. Some of them retain the vigorous action of the old westerns, adding to it a sense of character and a poetic awareness of the soil. “Marginal Land” fits exactly into this category. It is strong without being crude; the author writes as if from the riches of family experience, and he describes the prairie with the fidelity of one who has grown up in that spacious environment.

Stephen Randall is reared in Chicago; but his parents have been settlers, and the family still owns a parcel of land in the far west. When he comes to manhood Stephen finds that a physical taint makes it impossible to remain in the city. His parents are now dead, and there would be nothing to keep him from claiming his heritage in the country were it not that he has fallen in love with an. ambitious girl. Finally Josephine marries him on the understanding that he is to spend a first year at the ranch by himself. He establishes himself at the “Flying R,” and is soon deeply involved in an attempt to cultivate the soil. Much of the story is devoted to his farming experiments, to the long struggle with a climate which alternates between the snows of winter and the parching winds of high summer. He learns bitter lessons, makes some friends and one or two enemies. EMOTIONAL THEME In the midst of the first hard winter Josephine arrives unexpectedly. His happiness soon vanishes when he discovers that his wife has had an idealized vision of ranch life, and that she is quite incapable of sharing his battle with the soil. The slow death of his love adds an emotional theme, and is the direct cause of his enmity with Red Kevin, which culminates in a saloon fight as dramatic as the climax of a western film. Failure threatens Stephen after Josephine deserts him; but the friendship of a devoted circle, and the love of one small woman, refresh him for new struggles. The book moves on through the cycle of the seasons. Death, hardship and sudden danger have to be faced among the changing moods of the prairie. Stephen gradually strengthens his hold on the “Flying R,” and finds a new happiness in the midst of a growing family. He is a thoroughly likeable hero, most human in his weaknesses, and admirable in his slow mastery of a divided self. Josephine is shadowy; but Trina, the little neighbour girl who brings him two cows and “grandpop” as her dowry, is charmingly alive. Everyone who loves the soil, even if he tends it only in a vegetable garden, should find “Marginal Land” a book worth placing on the shelf for re-reading.

New Thrillers

THE MYSTERY OF No. 5. By F. J. Whaley. Robert Hale, London, through Whitcombe and Tombs. Price 8/9. VERSUS THE BARON. By Anthony Morton. Sampson, Low, Marston and Co., London, through Whitcombe and Tombs. Price 8/3.

The mystery upon which Foreign Agent No. 5 is working is nothing less than a plot to blow up the British Houses of Parliament. The plotters are I.R.A. men, but they are controlled from Berlin, and it is with the German Economic Minister that Colonel Findlay, Guy Tarrant and Marcus Oldfield have their final reckoning. Tarrant is put out of action when he crashes the gang’s headquarters. He is able to frustrate the plot, however, and the story ends with a fine air duel over Westminster. As a fast-moving spy thriller Mr Whaley’s book is to be recommended.

The new “Baron” book is as easy and exhilarating to read as any of its predecessors in this popular series. This time the Baron, an amateur cracksman of the Raffles type, is confronted with murder when he is about to buy a magnificent set of diamonds. The stones prove to be the famous Stars of Louis, whose theft from the Louvre has been the crime sensation of the year; and the Baron finds himself involved in a plot which taxes his courage and resource to the full. 1

The Wild West

(1) SENOR DESPERADO. By Walter Tompkins. Hutchinson, London. (2) DEATH RIDES THE DESERT. By Amos Moore. Robert Hale, London. Price 5/6. (3) THE BAR K. By Lawrence A. Keating.' Robert Hale, London. Price 5/6. All through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

These three new Westerns provide all the thrills and action that will be expected of them. Mr Tompkins’s story is set in old California where the ranch owner, Frederico Castelina, is waging a desperate battle against a bandit from the East. “Don Desperado,” as the Spanish-Californian is called, has able assistance from his friends of the California Rangers, but it is to. the help of a masked rider that he owes his closest escapes. The mystery of the rider’s identity adds suspense to a vigorous plot. Mr Moore’s stoiyis built around the efforts of a notorious saloon keeper to preserve the monopoly he holds over the water supply in arid Dust Pan Valley. As they water their cattle on the way to market, cowboys are plied with liquor and fleeced of their .money at the

“Free and Easy.” When Molly Manning breaks the water monopoly and threatens to break the saloon, Nick Dilworth plots to kill her. But aid comes from an unexpected Source as a “two-gun” stranger comes into the town. Lee Kenton, a devil-may-care cowboy, return? to the Bar K with a valuable meat contract but finds the ranch up for sale, his brother dead and his own life threatened. He sets to work to destroy the villain who has cowed

' all the neighbouring settlers by his brutalities, but the fight is a long, hard —and thrilling—one.