WILD JUSTICE. By George Birmingham. (Methuen. 7s. 6d.)—Readers who have
learned to expect a great deal of humour and a great deal of Irish and a great deal of gentle- manliness in all Canon Hannay's work will fmd these qualities in superabundance in his latest book. It is a murder story, thrilling enough to engage the attention, but also, odd though the words may sound in connexion with a tale of crime, quite' comfortable and companionable. The murder in itself is horrid enough : the discoVery of the body will satisfy the ghoulish though whether it will please the sophisticated is another matter. Would the face of a man who has been shot through the brain by means of a revolver thrust into the; mouth be in a position to show " an expression of terror ". and have " wide-open, staring eyes that expressed the same emotion of frantic fear " ? Be that as it may, the object of a murder story is to set the reader following clues and m this matter Canon Hannay has been very kind to us. We are allowed to be clever : we are allowed to find out nearly everything quite soon, but the main bulk of the story is so excellently told that we never become bored enough to feel that our knowledge was too easily won. We are, in fact, provided with just that quality of mental stimulus as is employed by the solving of a simple cross-word puzzle, and very pleasant, it is too.
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