Word: tales
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Author's Note to THE MURDER AT FLEET (J. P. Lippincott Company, 1928. $2.00.) Eric Brett Young tells the reader that there is not a word of truth in his whole novel. Not that the reader would for very long be kept in doubt because whatever merits this detective tale night possess plausibility is not one of them. Still it compensates for its lack of realism by a surplus of mystery and melodrama. A scarecrow plays a major part in the plot. Every elue in the murder led to a blank wall until Detective Faucet spied the blood...
...BACHELOR FATHER?Fairy tale about the gruff old libertine and his three little bastards (TIME, March...
...story, which is divided, epically enough, into nine books, the author is striving for the "epic note." He makes the wife of a poor Jewish teacher in Russia in 1840 cry out: "Let us cry woe! Why should a father say that of his only son?" Then the tale moves swiftly through generations down to Arthur Levy, intelligent psychiatrist, in contemporary U. S. Mr. Levy marries a Christian woman, has a child by her. But he is troubled about his race, hurt by the slurs of Nordics; so he finally leaves his family to go on a Jewish mission...
There are a few good spots in the book, such as the meeting of the author with the original Mrs. Grundy, but they are few and far between. Even where Mr. Bok has a good and original tale to tell, he more often than not spoils it by stretching it to excessive length and smothering it under bromidic sentimentality...
...impression of a lionized lecturer to ladies clubs, rather than of "a first-class fighting man", his latest opus. THE POOR GENTLEMAN (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928, $2.50) is a pleasantly written adventure and mystery story. Mr. Hay tries to weave an element of political philosophy into the tale and manages to combine his propaganda with flection very agreeably. It is a story of love, bolsheviks, kidnappers, and whatnot, all culminating in a happy ending...