The Iron Hand. By James Maclaren Cobban. (John Long. 6s.)—This
is a story of a mysterious crime, a wrongful con- demnation, and an ultimate rendering of justice all round. It is sufficiently exciting while it is advancing to the end, and we have the comfortable feeling that the end is the right one. We must own that the mechanical part of the story seems to us a little difficult, not to say unintelligible. A writer frequently forgets that what he sees clearly, or thinks that he sees clearly, in his own mind may have a very different appearance to other people. When a tale turns on some curious contrivance, it would be well if the writer had a working model of the thing made for him by way of preparation. Many readers, ,however, do not care for clearness or accuracy in such matters. It is enough for them if they have the customary ingredients, love and hate, wrong-doing and right-doing, hope and fear, mixed in the customary proportion.
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