The Gold Wolf. By Max Pemberton. (Ward, Lock, and Co.
6s.)—The novel of excitement—the novel, that is, which, without troubling about subtle definitions of character, claims the attention of its readers merely by a series of breathless events—depends for its interest entirely on credibility. And credibility is very largely an affair of minute and accurate detail. Mr. Pemberton in his former novels has generally given his readers enough details to reconcile them to the verisimilitude of his narrative, but in The Gold Wolf he has allowed himself a vagueness of outline which destroys the particular effect which he has hitherto occasionally achieved. For instance, Dudley Hatton, the hero, is a financial magnate who at the age of thirty- seven is spoken of as "the African King." Much of the interest of the story depends on financial operations. Mr. Hatton suffers faom nervous breakdown, but every now and then dictates a telegram which pulverises the " operations " of his enemies. Now to make this sort of thing credible Mr. Pember- ton should have given a realistic glimpse into these "operations." The mere fact barely stated gives no feeling of the fever of speculation in which Mr. Hatton obviously lived. Readers should not be asked to believe these things, they should be shown the facts, which will then have the same effect on their minds as on those of the characters of the story. There are one or two chapters in this book which, taken singly, are exciting ; but there is no coherence in the story as a whole, neither are its incidents sufficiently " motived" to be interesting. Judged by Mr. Pemberton's former standard in his own line of the novel of incident, the book is a decided disappointment. Mr. Pemberton's work is not "high art," but it has been, in his earlier books at any rate, good of its kind.
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