DISAP*INTINGLY, the novels from which one had hoped the most

this week turned out to be the worst. So I shall start with the best of some second-raters on the principle that it's more fun to reign in a jolly hell than preen it in a dreary heaven, and that it will soon be the Easter holidays and time to relax.

For adventure-cum-morality-cum-mystery-cum-love I can't speak too highly of an American book, The Hidden Hero. It starts in

Mexico with Eleanor, who has just lost her love in scandalous circumstances, teaming up with Roy, the Hollywood screen-writer, to search for a former hero-of-the-air who has totally disappeared leaving odd unexplained stories of complete moral breakdown behind him. The search, constantly hindered by mysterious and ominous checks, becomes for Eleanor the touchstone by which, in discovering if the aviator can recover his integrity, she may again find her own. All the incidental characters, places and odd touches are exceptionally well chosen or invented, and the ending is unguess- able. From whichever of its multilateral aspects you most enjoy it, it's a first-class story.

Its English equivalent, Beyond the Eagle's Rage. though com- posed of rather similar ingredients, isn't quite so good on any of

its levels as the last, though still good enough to make too much carping unreasonable. This one is set in Switzerland, in a mountain- resort cut off by an avalanche in which the hero, Randall, rediscovers

his integrity and, incidentally, a new zest for love, life and happiness by helping to round up a bunch of Nazi crooks who have taken furtive shelter there. There's a lot of good ski-ing, which is a help. Vile Repose is yet another of those novels finding-integrity- religion-and-real-deep-values in a Japanese prison-camp which would

seem, from internal evidence, to be the men's camp of the same

group that Agnes Keith wrote about in her magnificent Three Came Home. This book is at a far lower level. Aidan, a Government

man, is in the men's camp with some good loyal chums including notably old Doctor Crawley, while his wife, Sheila, is in the women's camp nearby. For a lesson on how ordinary decent British values will carry an English- (or Irish-) man through, the book will serve well enough ; but having had the funeral bakemeats served hot by better writers, their second appearance as cold mince seems stra@gely unsatisfying.

Ringstones are moderately eerie short-stories that are too dis- cursively written to chill the blood quite enough. But each has

an original imaginative streak, particullrly the Persian story about the woman who was entertained in the house of the Bear-Khan, and if the anonymous author will only cut the guff and tighten the whole thing up, he may well turn out a fine creepy entertainer.

The Cardinal has been a colossal success in its native America, which means, of course, that it has sold a fantastic number of

copies. I doubt whether it will do so here. This story of a Boston- Irish priest who steadily works his way up the -hierarchy is devoid of spiritual content for non-Catholics since each conflict that arises

is solved, not in terms of first principles or even humanity, but

simply by the application of the appropriate dogma. It rambles remorselessly on from dull to duller episode, and I, who usually

devour a book in a few hours, have been unwillingly dragging myself back to it, as a matter of sheer duty, for over a week. It may, of course, have some special interest for Roman Catholic readers, but this I must leave to Catholic reviewers to point out ; in any case, such a special interest would be irrelevant to its quality as literature.

Lastly, Pray Love. Remember. a nice title, and obviously a book intended to interest intelligent readers. It didn't me, and which of us this denigrates it is not proper for me to indicate. Like The Cardinal it goes on and on, this time about officers in North Africa living the present and re-living the past, and all the immense chunks of mostly single-line dialogue are prefaced not by inverted commas but by dashes. I do beg publishers to insist that their authors eschew experimental punctuation, which only makes a book a trouble instead of a pleasure to read, and concentrates angry attention on a triviality to impede appreciation of its literary