Faleonhoo" (Ward Lock, 7s. 6J.), hag invented an international detective agency, and with the hel of wireless, aiveraft and. foreig for the students of the' exciting plots, has concocted narrative:
life, Those who only know Mr. "Ian Hay" as a playwright and a novelist, have yet to. make his Aoquaintanee as an observer of Jife, its pathos, its humour and ita foibles. They may do to in book entitled "Playtime," which he has appearing with Hodder and Stoughton. He calls it "Playtime" because it isthe! fruit, of come of his recreations:
44, for instance, seeing a football match, a cabaret show, or the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race. We algo find him in the gallery of the Lyceum among the got! fu an Easter boat.train going to} ing the animals at the Zoo, or taking a rest, cure by. looking" on "at. w profcesional billiard match, "Te has 1 specint-Jy good subject for one stay he-cause it ison the opening of the {Tldater Season" at the Serpenme.
Revelations iv a Realistic Novel Japan, the land of the Rising Sun, the home of the cherry blos rom, the dainty background of the ming title geisha, has pro vided zminy a Buropetn. novelist and dramatist. with the material of many a pretty, whimsical tale. "Phot was in the days when Me AngloJapanese Alliance was al novelty andthe little people of the East seemed to us delightful children in a delightful setting. Sinca then, however, Japan has cory to itwitute the West, and unsentimental travellers from the West have visited. Japan. And it is @ different tale about Japan that the novelists and travellers are telling us now.
One of the foremost prophets n this new reajismy of the Orient Mr. John Paris, In a new novel, "Sayonara" (Collins, 7s. '6d. net), Mr. Paris resumes " the Atiack from a new and interesting angle.
Th this story his txro is one Richard Aylmer, a priest of the Church of England, who goes te Japan full of lofty missionary ideals, Part of idealism is that, in order to convert. Japan, hho should marry a Japanese wife, and circumstance rings it about Unit lis does marry a girl who has fseaped from immoral surround inet" The result is. degradation and the swallowing up of Richard Aslaicr by the baseness of native life." How he is rescued "may be left to the reader to find out.
Indeed, the story is not what striking book. thesis to ex: pound, and characters are] point the moral out—which is ist that ye wishes tal
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.