Lady Turpin. By Henry Herman. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)— Mr.
Herman is an expert in mystery-manufacture, and Lady Turpin must be accounted one of his greatest successes. Of course the female criminal is no novelty in fiction, or for that matter in fact, and to that extent Endalie Verpoint, the very charming young thief who steals diamonds as well as hearts, is an old friend. Yet Mr. Herman contrives to invest with special interest both the character and the adventures of Endalie. She has been brought up to burglary—the burglary of jewels—by her aunt and the seeming serving-man, Mike Roan, who in the end turns out to be her father; and it is, therefore, held to be no more immoral for her to thieve than it is for a kitten to kill the first mouse it sees. But, under the influence of love for Gerald Theveney, the brother of the girl whom she likes and plunders, she develops greatly but nA unnaturally, and but for her past would doubtless have become a good woman. As it is, there is nothing for her to do but to commit suicide, in, it must be admitted, a somewhat Ibsenitish fashion. Most of the characters in the story—all, indeed, but the rather wooden lover Gerald—are well drawn. Inspector Bender is a good sketch of a clever but conceited detective of the modern type, and Sanscrome, the intermeddling fool, although his attempts at amateur deteetivism are punished in too sensational a fashion, is also well drawn.
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