FICTION.
THE RED SHADOW.* WHEN the present writer was handed this book for review, he was given to understand that it was a novel. But he has now very grave doubts. The language and the form of construction are those of a skilful precis-writer, not of a novelist ; it has all the appearance of being a clear-headed summary of particular events and particular people ; further, so many of the figures are well-known personages—Lenin, Trotsky, Rasputin, and so
• The Red Shadow. By W. L. Slennerhassett. London: Duckworth. Us. ed. net,]
on—that the reader is likely to put it down to his ignorance alone that he has not heard of all the others. He feels that Mr, Blennerhassett, D.S.O., O.B.E., late of the Secret Service in Russia, probably has the advantage of him. Moreover, the course of events has all the accidence of truth, the inconsequence of truth. There seems little reason, for instance, why Roman, himself the child of incest, should also be made to conceive an illicit passion for his sister, unless Mr. Blennerhassett can shrug his shoulders and say, " As a matter of fact, it was so." These things require great artistic justification if they are to be intro- duced. Not that anyone will find their treatment here un- pleasant : the author has such a dry, matter-of-fact way of stating them that no reader will turn a hair. But he will be equally unmoved by everything else, especially by Roman's political vacillations, from the day when he was given a gold penholder by the governor of a province, to the day he met his " fool's death " leaping on the high altar in the convent at Alapajevak. Not a single character has the illusion of life, nor does a single event have dramatic as opposed to historical interest.
But whatever one thinks of this book as a piece of fiction, one must admit that as a lucid account of the events preceding the Russian revolutions, and of the cause of these revolutions themselves, it is admirably simple and convincing. The author holds our attention not so much by our interest in psychology or drama as by our different interest in bald fact.
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