Mr. Cole, whom hitherto we have been accustomed to connect
with Guild-Socialism and economics, has suddenly broken out as a novelist. The Brookhin Murders is a long and highly exciting detective story. The idea is ingenious. Old Sir Vernon Brooklyn gives a large family dinner party to celebrate his seventieth birthday, and after the party two members of the family are found murdered, one in the house, the other in the garden, and the remarkable thing about them is that each bears strong evidence of having been murdered by the other. The solution of the mystery is in the hands of the police, and investigation shows that this evidence is the result of careful faking. Suspicion begins to centre on Walter Brooklyn, Sir Vernon's spendthrift brother. At this point Joan Cowper, Walter's stepdaughter, and Robert Ellery, her fiancé, begin a course of investigation of their own, with the object of showing that Walter is innocent. The progress of the investigations, both of the police and also of Joan and Ellery, are followed in minute detail and with such skill on the part of the writer that the narrative never for a moment becomes obscure. As in every good detective story, we find ourselves strongly suspecting, and with good reason, the most unlikely persons. But even when the identity of the murderer is beyond doubt the evidence is still very far from complete, and the gradual completion of the evidence gives the novel a new lease of excitement, which is maintained with great ingenuity. Mr. Cole's first excursion into fiction is, in short, a first-class detective story—a very skilful piece of work which will delight the heart of all to whom such stories appeal.
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