Answer Yes or No is professional in manner and closely knit. Mr. Mortimer, whose Rumming Park has left an agreeable impression, writes with an authority remarkable in a man under 30, and gets his story going with a verve and precision which command the reader's confidence. His hero Ransom, a young Common Law barrister, is isolated by circumstance, and is John (Clifford) Mortimer 1923– © Chris Daviesmaking his way by devotion to work and ability. The first chapter shows him in court, and the skill with which his nature—humane but sturdy, conscientious but not diffident—is conveyed through action, in a double sense of that word, is admirable. Mr. Mortimer has a mature conception of characters and relationships in public life, but an immature conception of private emotions and conflicts.

Ransom meets a couple called Letts and almost at once fails deeply in love with the unhappy wife, Caroline...