The Red Herring. By Ronald Macdonald. (Everett and Co. 6s.)—In
this story Mr. Macdonald repudiates his talent for character-drawing and condescends to frank melodrama. The hero of the book, Marie-Joseph Casimir de Mont-Lussae, is an impossible figure who possesses more resource, calmness, good taste, and power of immediate action than fall to the lot of any one human being. The elaborate device by which he distracts the attention of the world while a Treaty is being signed is, unfortunately for the interest of the story, discovered to the reader by a picture on the outside of the book, and therefore it is not so enthralling as it might otherwise have been. The story moves briskly, and is written in a lively manner ; but the figures are merely pieces in the game, and are as conventional in their mental characteristics as the pieces on a chess-board.
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