Monte Carlo. By Margaret Staepoole (Mrs. II. de Vere Stacpoole).
(Hutchinson and Co. 6s.)—This is an extremely clever sketch of the adventures of an English artist and his wife at Monte Carlo, and, surprising to note, the interest of the book, in spite of its subject, is in the drawing of the characters. Julia Revell, the heroine, is the child of a dean, and in some ways the true daughter of a Cathedral Close. Some time before the opening of the story she has run away with Jack Revell, a young artist, and the book is much concerned with the conflicting elements in her nature. Sometimes the side which fell in love with Jack is uppermost, and sometimes the side which is derived from a long line of ccn- ventional ancestors. Julia herself is a novelist who has made a success with a story called "The Apple," which the reader imagines to have dealt with some of the problems of modern life. The third character of the book is a man called Carslake, who tells Julia that he is a big-game hunter, but who combines with that occupation the role of a Secret Service agent in the pay of Austria. It may be doubted whether the little piece of melodrama in which Carslake flies from the French police is quite appropriate in its setting, but it is at any rate well dono and makes for excitement. The book is written with much humour, and the analysis of the characters of Julia and her husband will every now and then surprise the reader by the minuteness of its fidelity to life.
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