FICTION
AN ENTERTAINING CONSPIRACY 1
The Gun Runners. By George A. Birmingham. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d. net.) - • _
TiiEnE are tales of adventure of two kinds. One is told with spirit as though the anther enjoyed telling it the other gisTS the impression that it was Merely told in order to imake a book. Mr. George A. Birmingham f s• novels are Nery'distinctry of the first order, full of shrewd comment on men 'and matters, abounding 'disareet but -lively' himiour and in deXterous delineation of character. The „Gun Runners is a tale not of Ireland but ofan island between Italy and Dalmatia which the treaty makers of Versailles- quite forgot to `apportion to any country. It is inhabited by an order of iuns, under the charge of the Abbeis Irene, an elderly lady of great character Who, when the island is invaded by both Italian and Serbian officials dennanding- income-tax, locks her nuns in the chapel and swears so violently at the officers who have come to trouble the convent peace that both bands rush away in confusion in each other's boats, an error which later led to an international incident: ; - - Stilt the Abbess Irene was more than an astute old lady : shenas a politician and financier into the bargain. Of Royal descent herself, when she learned that her relatives were planning a 'coup to repossess a throne which they in common with:many other local monarchs had lost, she allowed the plot to centre at her nunnery. A Dalmatian count, a genial but wicked Jewish financier, and a young Irish gentle- man-in-waiting tathe dispossessed Ro al faiiii1S, Were the actis-c parties. The RoYal- family. itself,. Consisting of a beautiful, lady of American origin and wealth and a small boy, prepared their -coronation robes. And the Abbess Irene got the laugh of them all by a pacific stratagem too simple, too comic; and too final for tabloid description. .
Lively and laughable as the plot of The Gun Runners is, the contributory incidents have a specially farcical richness. The :Mediterranean island whence arms are procured for the revolution is a comic picture of Ireland in little. As to the island Of nini,-never before have the founts of humour, all unsuspected of uninitiates, to be found within convent walls been so magnificently drained : - there is a pious sister, forever quoting the Rules of the Order and forever being outmarshalled by the _Abbess, Who is funnySimply because she appears so monotonous. By a nice touch the rough mountain nation which so nearly came to have a king again is economic- ally described like this :— "it is characteristic of this people that they cheer in blasts of seven if they cheer at all."
Mr. Birmingham never makes the mistake of saying too much about anything, even funny things. His story is full of excitement, moves trickily, leading on expectation, but craftily gives no clues. It takes us vividly through a mighty sea-storm, up into the windswept hills and along the convent veranda where the nuns" meditate" after luncheon in deck chairs to the sound of each other's snoring. The reader is always straining to know what comes next, yet stopping to chuckle a second time over the ingenious hits which the author o unobtrusively gives (out of high spirits) not only to his own , , . - . • . _ . characters but to journalists, politicians, and Governments of all kinds.
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