Fiction
Escape in Vain. By Georges Simenon. Translation by Stuart Gilbert. . (Routledge. 8s. 6(1.) Men in the Same Boat. By J. D. Beresford and Esme Wynne-Tyson. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d,) Trust in the Springtime. By Oriel Malet. (Faber. 6s.) Buds of May. By Beatrice Kean Seymour. (Heinemann. los. 6d.)
THE increasing success of M. Georges Simenon with the English reading public may well revolutionise the contemporary thriller. Simenon is a born story-teller ; his characters carry conviction, his crimes, while often horrible and macabre, are plausible, never mere exercises in contrived. ingenuity. Escape in Vain contains two short novels, and while both have their detectives, these are minor figures, and the psychological interest is made our first concern. We see th4 crimes committed from the criminal's angle, and it is his progress on which the interest and suspense is centred. Here is a reality, terrible yet lifelike, which makes the average murder mystery tame by comparison. The Lodger of M. Simenon's first story bears some resemblance to Mrs. Belloc Lowndes's exciting novel of the same title on Jack-the-Ripper, but Elie Nagear, a Jew from Istanbul, is not a sex-maniac, but merely a waster who knocks a rich Dutchman on the head, in order to relieve him of a hundred thousand francs, while travelling by night from Brussels to Paris. The crime, so quickly conceived and carelessly carried out, has its own peculiar swift repercussions. On his return to. Brussels, Elie's very appearance feeds the suspicion of his mistress, a cabaret dancer whom he had picked up on his travels. Persuading him of the necessity for hiding quite easily, she plants him on her family in Charleroi. He pretends that he is a political refugee, and for a few hours he feels safe. Then Sylie turns up warning him to get dear over the Dutch frontier. Her younger sister Antoinette, already suspicious, taxes him with the crime which he admits. Soon Madame Baron's other lodgers become suspicious, Elie is for ever boasting and asserting himself as a man of affairs, though nothing will induce him to put his nose out of doors. And then the truth comes out. The landlady, furious at first, becomes infected by Elie's own weakness and allows him to stay on. The tension increases, and the whole situation has a fantastic yet fatal horror as the little group wait for the inevitable development. M. Baron's birthday celebration (he is the only one unaware of Elie's crime) makes the brilliant climax of this study. The end is disappointing. M. Simenon jumps from Elie's arrest to the point where his land- lady scrambles along to see him embark on the transport ship.
The second story, One Way Out, makes no such compromise. A ne'er-do-well, Jules Bachelin, of humble birth, persuades a young girl of a middle-class family to elope with him. Already wanted by the police, the young man lives by his wits. From the very beginning the affair is hopeless and fated, for the girl, Juliette Grandvalet, is of the passive type, uncertain of her desires, yet indifferent to the claims that others make on her. Her father leaves his wife and position in order to follow the runaways. He employs a seedy little detective who traces the couple only to lose them. Again and again their trail is picked up ; but they have gone from bad to worse, and have resolved on suicide. The detective arrives with the girl's father in time to hear the fatal shots. This story, with its sordid detail, is a brilliant example of M. Simenon's superb' technicle.
The first part of Men in the Same Boat is not unlike The Ocean, reviewed in these columns some two years ago. Here again are seven men, of widely differing character, adrift in an open boat. This short novel, while it lacks the vividness of James Hanley's venture, is thoughtful, stimulating and provocative ; for the authors follow their characters beyond the point of death. An old man, a wireless operator and a Jew experience reincarnation, and we learn of their new lives on earth. A refugee, a clergyman and a sailor explore some other worlds than ours. It is in dealing with the
seventh character, a man made wise by experience, that the authors reach the highest peak of their conception. In consequence, the reader suffers from a feeling of anti-climax during the final chapters of this unusual book.
Trust in the Springtime, by Miss Oriel Malet, is a short first novel of charm and promise. It deals with a single April day, from dawn to dusk, in the lives of a small group of people, all of whom have a legitimate interest in the affairs of an academy of dancing and dramatic art, which is run for the benefit of orphans whose parents have been connected with the theatre. The novel, while on the slight side, has imagination and integrity in its formal design which merits high praise. Miss Malet tries her hand ambitiously with a widely differing range of characters, and if the figures of the academy's president and the refugee professor of music are too good to be true, then the portraits of several others, especially of the young students, are touching and excellent.
Three generation; play the principal parts in Mrs. Kean Sey- mour's long novel, Buds of May, which, divided into three sections, opens in 1878, and closes on the eve of the first world war. It is a chronicle of family life, of the prosperous middle classes and their interests. Robert Gaywood is a banker with three daughters, and his wife's main project is getting them satisfactorily married. She has two successes, but her youngest girl, the college graduate Emily, is more than a match for an equally tiresome mother. There is a skeleton in the cupboard which rattles faintly now and again, in the shape of Mrs. Gaywood's illegitimate niece, which Emily finds quite useful on occasion. She is let down badly in the end, though, while her mother, a little late in the day perhaps, marries a second time and becomes a triumphant ladyship. JOHN HAMPSON.
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