24 NOVEMBER 1923, Page 26

ADVISORY BEN. By E. V. Lucas. (Methuen. 7s. 6d. net.)

Mr. E. V. Lucas' elaboration of his idea is not as good as the idea itself. His heroine, " Advisory Ben," otherwise Miss Benita Staveley, opens an office, which, like a certain Victorian guide-book, should have been labelled " Enquire within about everything." She gets a good many people out of scrapes and undertakes much useful work, but Mr. Lucas' accounts of her doings suffer from being too superficial, so that the human element in each undertaking is not adequately developed.