The World's Great Snare. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. (Ward and
Downey.)—Mr. Oppenheim, who has undoubtedly proved himself a master of the art of writing sensational fiction, has here surpassed himself. From the first chapter, in which James Hamilton wakens up in the Sierras to use bad language and turn bloodshot eyes towards the western sky, to the last, in which the hero, Bryan, is reconciled to his cynical father, Lord Wessemer, through the tender mercies of his wife, Myra, there is hardly a page which has not its accident, or its murder, or its hairbreadth escape, or something equally melodramatic. Myra, who is Bryan's mistress before she is his wife, is one of those fascinating beauties of wild America who are coveted by in- numerable men, and for whom, therefore, he has to do not a little fighting. Then Myra is lost and found again—in England— whither Bryan goes for various reasons, but more particularly to marry an old sweetheart. The latter is unequal to the task of marrying a man with such a past as his. But he finds his father and his mother, and—although not for a considerable time—dis- covers that he is not illegitimate. All ends happily in, perhaps, rather too old-fashioned a style. There is no doubt whatever that The World's Great Snare is a very clever and readable story of its class.
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