3 NOVEMBER 1906, Page 37

The Heir. By Sydney Grier. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—

Those readers who will rejoice to think that Mr. Grier has returned to his romances of South-Eastern Europe will be more than a little disappointed to find that after about six chapters his present story resolves itself into an account of the capture and detention of the principal dramatis personas by a band of brigands. The reader has at first to string up his imagination to follow Mr. Grier's private and particular brand of high politics,—he recog- nises with pleasure that implacable enemy of straight dealing, "Scythia," and tries to imagine the country of " Emathia." After all this, it in somewhat provoking for him to be obliged to switch off his ideas to the comparatively commonplace sufferings of the future Emperor of the East during his captivity. Before he has had time even to formulate his pretensions, the hero, his sister, and his next heir are all of them held to ransom by the bandits. Their struggles and sufferings occupy three-quarters of the book, and the story as foreshadowed in the first chapter never gets written at all. Perhaps the author merely means his present book to stand as the first volume of a series which is to deal with the further adventures of Maurice Teffany, more correctly called Theophanis, who is gloriously proved to be not only de stirpe imperatorwm, but

actually the rightful Emperor of the East. In this ease, it cannot but be regretted that Mr. Grier should have thought it necessary to make his first volume so long. Let us hope that if he does intend to give us a romance about Maurice's pretensions, he will not allow himself to be tempted away from his main theme by any side issue, however picturesque and exciting. We cannot but trust that we are fated to meet Professor Panagiotis

and his plots once more, and that, the ground being cleared by the marriage of the two heirs, we shall in the next instalment of the story get plenty of that romantic political intrigue in the delineation of which Mr. Grier has so often proved himself a master.