"Mr. Popp or Borseo."—By Peter Blundell, T. Werner Lawrie, Ld.
It is not surprising that so ingenious and resourceful a young man as Mr. Podd succeeded in taining for the author the £250 prize offered by the publishers in a humourous novel competition. The reward is richly deserved. Mr. Blundeil's story is a glorious bur-lasque of colonial officialdom, as re-resented by the solitary, imposing figure of Lochinvar MeWhizzle, Chief the Singapore Secret Police, The Great Lochinvar, with the nimble assistance of Podd, undertakes recovery of a famous racing pony, "Old Jake' (a chestnut), mysteriously missing from its stable a few Gays before anticipated triumph in the local Derby; and the story of the search makes a brilliant parody of Conan Doyle's "Silver Blaze." Lochinvar is vain, desperately obtuse, stupidly sentimental: his plogess is as gorgeous as that of any hero in a Drury Lane panto-mine, If the satirical cap fits, or hag over fitted, in Singapore, Singapore must be chuckling. More probably, the original Lochinvar sat for his portrait in India. And he is just the kind of man to be delighted with the result—as all readers should certainly be.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.