Smenxrs oF Suapow.—By Leslie Me-Fartane, "Stanley" Pasi, London, Montreal as the scene of a murder mystery is an original choice, for the reader is well acquainted with the sinister districts of London and New Work and a change of air iS refreshing. And Montreal in this story yields place to no city for sinister districts and possesser also worse type, the French Canadians, most of whom apparently belong to the criminal classes.
In "Streets of Shadow" Mr. Me-Farlane statis well, the murders re adequately foul ad inexplicfable, and the initial detective work of the lawyer hero is convincing, but then the author" allows. the reader to forget the original mur-Gers in following the tribulations of the hero and finally the solution is dragged in rather by the ears, in a couple of conscience-stricken confessions.
The adventures of the hero are strenuous. but conventional—Edgar Wallace has used them all lots of times already—the heroine sweet And innocent, but plays a very small art in the plot, and the mordorer fearsome creature but £0 obiously the murderer that the pleasant game of "Spot, the Criminal"
denied to the reader. would be unkind to criticise too severely a book that only claims to] be "bright and entertaining," bat] how "much more entertaining it ould have been if the author bad Kept a tighter grip on the story Ho?bad cat ut the sneasentia= example, Chapter 7, twelve pages,
appears again—and if he had pick-devoted to 8 character who never ea"ap thet loose ends that strageie Shout all through the book and had hered. them. together to. make texture more closely" nit
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.