Doctor Nikola. By Guy Boothby. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)— Mr.
Boothby is making quite as effective play with Dr. Nikola as Mr. Conan Doyle ever did with Sherlock Holmes. This mar- vellous man, who is no less striking a personality than the prince of unprofessional detectives, and a good deal more demonic—by the way, the introduction of the black cat is too suggestive of stage " business "—seems a little of a madman. But yet we are assured that he is really a great and purely philanthropic man of science who will go through fire and water, and indeed be quite Napoleonic in his unscrupulousness, if only he may accomplish his essentially unselfish ends. Doctor Nikola is the sequel to another story which told of the extraordinary devices resorted to by the magician to obtain a Chinese " stick." The stick figures in the new story, which, like its predecessor. is told in the first person by a man who comes under Nikola's influence and becomes his assistant. In this book it is used to enable Nikola to penetrate into the monasteries of China, and even Thibet, to defeat secret societies, and all to secure a unique anmsthetic. The story is fall of dangers, combats, and hairbreadth escapes, and is, to say the least, quite as well told as any of its author's previous works. Bruce, who tells these adventures, is almost as remarkable a figure as Nikola himself, whose life he saves more than once. The love- making is the weakest part of the book, Gladys being but a merely conventionally sweet girl.
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