OTHER NOVEIS.—Helen Vardon's Confession. By R. Austin Freeman. (Hodder and
Stoughton. 7s. 6d. net.)—An unusually circumstantial detective story, in which the chapters that deal with technical subjects as varied as the manufacture of pottery and the cult of spiritualism rival in interest those more especially devoted to the unravelling of the raystety.—Title Clear. By Sara Jeannette Duncan. (Hutehinson. 78. 6d. net.)—The opening of Mrs. Cotes's story, in which she describes the budding and blighting of Kirsty Tod's early romance, is so delightfully spontaneous that it is impossible not to gird a little at the too °brims stage-management of the eventual "happy ending." But if any reader condemn such a sentiment as hypercriticism where so charming a book is concerned, possibly he is justified. —Night Drums. By Achmed Abdullah. (Hutchinson. 78. 6d. net.)—An exciting story of African adventure. The hero is an Englishman who left the Army as a young man on account of money troubles and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. After fifteen years' service under the French flag he finds himself in command of a military station in the Sahara, where the action of the story takes plac.o.—The Lonely Unicorn. By Alec Waugh. (Grant Richards. 7s. 6d. net.)— In his new book the author of The Loom of Youth presents another variation of his original theme—the moral and spiritual dangers which beset the average public school boy. Roland Whately was initiated in the art of flirtation by an unprincipled companion, and all his later romantic adventures seem to be spoiled for him, owing, we are led to suppose, to the early influence to which he had been exposed at school. But the logic of the argument does not ring quite true, and the book is —fortunately—almost as unconvincing as it is unpleasant.
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