Mystery and Adventure Novels
THE HOUSE OF FEAR. By Robert W. Service. (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d.)—Characters and incidents are so plentiful in Mr. Service's novel that only the broadest outline of the plot can be given here. The Hon. Peter MacBeth, a wealthy Scotsman who, living in France, has acquired dipsomaniao habits after a great sorrow, is wandering about Paris one i
night when he is saved from death at the hands of a gang of thieves by Pascaline Spirelli, whose husband, the leader of the gang and a criminal of international reputation, is in prison. Out of pity for Peter, and in return for his generosity, Pascaline turns from her evil life, and in doing so betrays her old associates to the police. In their endeavour to escape the expected revenge, Peter and she settle in a lonely mansion in the Gilles de Rais country. They soon discover that the house is of evil fame, being known in the neighbourhood as " The House of Fear." A sequence of eerie events, ending in murder,. follows ; and Peter, now cured of intemperance, is convicted and sentenced to death by Judge de Marsac, the President of the local Assize. Marsac's dead brother, however, is revealed in the nick of time to have been the culprit, his guilt being established by Spirelli, who, reformed after his term in gaol, has risen through his knowledge of the underworld into the greatest detective of his day. Yet the brother proves to have been merely the legal criminal, since he was hypnotized by Marsac himself, who has held Pascaline also for a time under his evil spell. Mr. Service gives us sheer melodrama. But, in addition to his other notable qualities of invention, vigour, and humour, he has that genius for atmosphere which throws the mantle of reality round the most impossible situations.
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