“BLACK MASTERY”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1939, Page 2

“BLACK MASTERY”

A NOTEWORTHY FIRST NOVEL. ROMANCE OF EXMOOR. Announced as a first novel by its author, Jeremy Turtle, “Black Mastery” is likely to be welcomed by many readers as an exceptionally fine addition to the literature of entertainment. The book is frankly a thriller, but it is a thriller of the better kind, in which real human beings, even those of them who are of a rather pronounced and exceptional type, play their parts in circumstances and scenes pictured with charm, skill and discernment. The story is one of international intrigue, in which agents of espionage and -counter-espionage engage in a struggle for supremacy literally of murderous intensity. The drama thus evolved runs its course on the Somerset side of Exmoor, that famous stretch of wild country which formerly was the site of a great forest, but is now mainly moorland and marsh, though some more or less extensive patches of woodland remain. Exmoor, with its deer runs, its fishing streams and its ancient and historic villages and country-houses is a noble setting and background for an eventful and stirring story, in which there is any amount of lively and at times, breath-taking action. Jeremy Turtle, which sounds very much like a pseudonym, is an author of whom much more should be heard. "Black Mastery” is not only an eminently readable yarn, but is possessed of distinct literary merit. It introduces a noteworthy assembly of characters, varying greatly in type and all of them artistically deliniated and vividly alive.

The unusual merit of the book appears even in its minor and incidental passages. There is, for example, a delightful old negro, who has come to England to thank the descendants of the piratical person by whom his ancestors had been captured and conveyed as slaves from Africa to the West Indies. He finds his reason for gratitude in the fact that if his ancestors had not been enslaved he would have been an ignorant savage of the forest,

instead of being a well-known .dentist of Kingston, Jamaica. A copy of “Black. Mastery” has been received from Mr W. S. Smart, Sydney agent for Messrs Hodder and Stoughton. The book may be obtained from all booksellers.