As this is a work of fiction it her irritating to find the author'
actually used as the name of the scoundrel who comes to a well-deserved end on the scaffold, In a sense the book might well be an extract from a modern Newgate Calendar, It is well written and the chain of crime as thoroughly despicable as any lover of crime stories could" well desire, The feritical mind suggests that, the author was extraordinarily lucky to avoid any direct contact with the police until almost at the end, of the book, Faith in the police organs tion of the world surely falters noting how easily this forger, Don Juan and card sharper managed to live in luxury and travel round the Jworld in the process. On the principle that no man is altogether bad, the author gives his scoundrel what may be described as, on the whole, 'a chivalrous attitude towards his women accomplices, and of course there is the inevitable woman whose death put an end to all possibilities of the straight and narrow being. recovered, Another point will be accounted to the author for Fighteousness, and that is, in bringing his adventurer to the Far East he. strictly confines his nefarious enterprises to Hongkong and he apparently passes Shanghai without the foggiest idea that anything but virtue can exist in this much maligned port. 'The book may while away a few hours for people of strong minds, but it is not to be recommended' to anybody with the slightest tinge of morbidity in his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.