I am aware that, in confessing to an entire ignorance of any one of the so-called Books of Artemas, I place myself in a minority so small as to be almost beneath notice.  This certainly is how the publishers regard the matter if one may judge by their ecstatically jubilant, “Artemas has written a novel! 7s. 6d. net,” on the wrapper of A Dear Fool (WESTALL).  Well, I have read the novel carefully, even I trust generously, with the unhappy result that (knowing how elusive and individual a thing is laughter) I can hardly bring myself to say how dull I found it.  But the fact remains.  It is all about nothing—­a preposterous little plot for the identification, at a wildly inhuman reception, of an anonymous dramatist, revealed finally as the journalist hero who was nearly sacked for writing the play’s only bad notice.  In my day I have met both editors and critics; even dramatists.  I don’t say they were all pleasant people; many of them were not.  But—­here is my point—­practically every one of them had at least sufficient of our common humanity to prevent them from behaving for one instant as their representatives do in this book.  Let us charitably leave it at that.  Probably the next man I meet will have invited apoplexy over his enjoyment of the same pages that moved me only to an irritated bewilderment.  You never can tell.

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I rather think that The Man with the Rubber Soles (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is Sir ALEXANDER BANNERMAN’S firstling, at least as far as fiction is concerned.  If so, many others will share my hope that it may prove to be the eldest of a large family.  For the author has not merely the knack of telling a good mystery story in a way that keeps one interested until the last page is turned; he tells it in a curiously dry matter-of-fact way that makes really startling adventures seem the sort of thing that might happen to anybody.  The story concerns the pursuit of a gang of men who are engaged in importing forged Treasury notes on a large scale and uttering them through skilfully organised agencies.  The police and various civilians between them—­there is no super-sleuth to weary us with his machine-like prowess—­run the thing to earth, partly by skill and partly by good luck, and the civilians in particular have a stirring time doing it.  Bombs, automatic pistols, even soldiers and a submarine, assist quite naturally in sustaining the interest.  And a pleasant little romance is really woven into the plot, not just pushed in anyhow.  Altogether The Man with the Rubber Soles is a most excellent story of its kind, a real novel because plot and treatment are alike new, and one can safely prophesy that when Sir ALEXANDER BANNERMAN produces his nextling he will find a large and appreciative circle of readers waiting to welcome it.

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