20 NOVEMBER 1897, Page 10

Tangled Threads. By Esme Stuart. (S. W. Partridge and Co.)

—The title of this complicated story is as correct as it is sugges- tive, but it must be confessed that the author unravels the plot with considerable skill. The villain of the play is a private secretary, we regret to say, and a very thoroughgoing rascal he is too. Of course some external assistance is required before some of the characters can be disposed of, and one is not surprised when a quarry explosion is introduced. That old property of the novelist, the " sprained ankle," comes in usefully, though one would have thought Esmb Stuart sufficiently expert to have done without it. It might, we think, be relinquished now for the bicycle accident, the only drawback being that it is not easy to carry even the most sylph-like form on a bicycle as well as your- self. Tangled Threads is clever and amusing, and with enough incident to keep the reader interested throughout its perusal.