The Shadow of a Life. By J. Lawrence Hornibrook. (Swan
Sonnenschein and Co.)—This single-volume novel of two hundred and thirty-eight pages deserves special and favourable notice, not because of any great merits as regards style or plot-construction, but because it is a spirited, and on the whole successful, attempt to meet French sensational fiction of the Boisgobey or Gaboriau order on its own field. Inspector Jordine, who is the true hero of it, is not quite a Lecoq; his mental characteristics are, indeed, English, not French. But he is quite the equal of Lecoq in shrewdness and strength of will. Then The Shadow of a Life is full, almost to overflowing, of murders, hairbreadth escapes, villains, and love-mysteries. The episode of the unfortunate girl, Marie, who saves her lover from death at the hands of an assassin only to see him appropriated by a rival, is exceptionally well told ; and the portrait of the Count de Hagen, the chief scoundrel of the Chilteau Rouge, is indubitably a powerful one. If Mr. Hornibrook would but confine within reasonable limits his tendency to melo- dramatic writing, he would probably attain a considerable success in the line of fiction which he has adopted.
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