"Tue Man Wo Kyew Too Mucu."
By G. K. Chesterton. (Cassell. 7s.
6d. net.)
It is to Mr. Chesterton's credit that he can write a detective story that would be rejected by every one of the cheaper magazines. His mind is so swift and sententious, his incidents are so apocalyptic, his characters such monstrous creatures of shadow, his scenery so reminiscent of Roland and the Dark Tower, that it is an-intellectual adventure to follow the bewildering mazes of his imagination, As in the opposite case of Mr. Wells, his preoccupation with social problems is, reacting to his disadvantage as a writer of stories. Brilliant as those essays in the incredible are, there are too many King Charles's heads among them.. There is hardly a tale im which the Jew, or the scientist, or the plutocrat, or the antiquarian, or the politician does not offer his head to be hit. Again and again amid the lurid gloom of these pages you can trace the beatific lineaments of the peasant of the Middle Ages. Sherlock-Holmism and propagandism make a quaint and piquant mixture, but it is not for. all tastes.
As a detail: of machinery we rather regret the dismissal of Father Brown. He was: @ character after the author's own heart, and his personality did manage to give the volumes with which.. his name is associated a sort of continuous interest. The "man who knew too much" is am unsubstantial fiction and even he only" extends about halfway through the book. The longest, and in some ways the best, of the stories is "The Trees of Pride," though like the others it is of course compact of improbabilities. Luckily, improbabilities have ne terrors for Mr. Chesterton, or-he would never have started this curious branch of his activities with "The Club of Queer Trades,"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.