5 JULY 1902, Page 32

Will o' the Wisp. By John Garrett Leigh. (I. M.

Dent and Co. 4s. 6d.)—This novel would be greatly improved .if,_. like "Vanity Fair," it could have been written as "a novel without a hero." For Ernest Brotherton, half hero, half unacknowledged "heavy father," is certainly not a success. It is, to begin with, quite impossible to believe in him, and it is also very difficult to sympathise with him, or think him anything but a particularly tiresome kind of fool. Constable Barnes and his wife, on the other hand, are well-drawn possible and pleasant characters, and the heroine, Will o' the Wisp, contrives to get a good deal of her charm over the footlights. The book is very fairly pleasant reading, but all the same, there seems to be no inevitable reason why it should have been written.