Richard Gordon. By Alexander Black. (Lothrop Publishing Company, Boston, 1J.S.A.)—Although
there are things in this novel which may offend the reader's taste, the book is on the whole interesting, and has not the fault of extreme thinness which is apt to be characteristic of a great deal of present- day fiction. Richard Gordon is the story of a young American lawyer—the book is not only American, but the scene passes almost entirely in the city of New York—and the American life depicted is cosmopolitan enough to be amusing to English readers. With regard to the attitude of the heroine there must be two opinions. The informal divorce before marriage, contrary to the wishes of the lover with whom she had eloped, will not seem to all readers ethically so fine a thing as the young lady herself thinks it. The political part of the hero's career will be read with interest, although even to readers to whom American politics are not the enigma which they appear to most foreigners many of the proceedings will seem profoundly puzzling. The American atmosphere of the book makes it pleasant, and even without this the novel would be good reading as a story. The folly of so sensible a man as Richard Gordon with regard to his sister will seem to English readers an impossible exaggeration,— but it may be that such a situation might arise in America, though, it might be thought, hardly among the sort of pc vie of whom Mr. Black seems to be writing. It is a novel with a good deal of careful workmanship in it.
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