For those who like a pirate story and a mystery, "Scarface" is a fine one, well written, with plenty of action…. A map of the West Indies would have been a useful addition. And why will authors continue to make their people talk in hard-to-pronounce dialect when no young person likes to read it? As one boy said to me: "I spend so much time figuring out how the words sound that I lose sight of what they mean." Luckily, only a few of … Norton's lesser pirates drop "h's" all over the deck. (p. 6)

Margaret Ernst, in New York Herald Tribune Book Review (© I.H.T. Corporation; reprinted by permission), September 12, 1948.