17 FEBRUARY 1906, Page 24

For Life — and After. By George R. Sims. (Chatto and Windus.

6s.)—The reader who thinks that Mr. Sims is about to give him a detailed account of the feelings of a convict condemned to a life sentence will be disappointed in this novel. The book is really only a detective story of a rather ordinary type, in which the heroine, while innocent, suffers a term of imprisonment. On her release after the usual fifteen or sixteen years of penal servitude, which constitute a " life " sentence, she sets to work to prove her innocence, which she dot's in an entirely satisfactory manner. It is impossible to say that the novel at any moment rises above the commonplace. The personages are merely types who do not suggest counterparts in real life, and the inevitable detective closely resembles a very large number of his predecessors in fiction.