23 JUNE 1928, Page 24

Those who like light reading, punctuated by ecstatically recounted thrills,

will find both in Mr. Joseph Gollomb's Spies (Hutchinson), which follows the career of various pro- fessors of espionage from Mithridates to the spy:dancer, Meta Hari, who danced before two Sisters of Mercy the night before she was shot. If we may borrow a phrase of the author's own, " romantic tinsel " seems fairly to describe the quality of the book which, though its price is eighteen shillings, would be more rightly priced and placed among the shilling shockers. There are many misspellings and more or less ignorant mis- prints, and it is news indeed that Gylippus, the Spartan, ever captured Athens.