Good Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

IN DARK PLACES--John Russell-- Knopf ($2.50). Twelve tales of savage environments and more or less savage people by the author of Where the Pavement Ends. A tourist searches for "the color of the East" and finds it strangely crim-son--a tropical grafter fights to the death so no one may rob his superiors but himself--criminals, escaping on a former slave ship fall into the hands of the deadly justice of the vampire bats--and so on. The yarns are varied, colorful, exciting, skilfully told, with a knowledge of strange lands and stranger characters that is obviously firsthand. Neither Kipling nor Conrad, In Dark Places is nevertheless a first-class book of adventurous short stories--and it would be only carping to criticize it for not being the masterpiece it does not pretend to be.

THE COPPER Box--J. S. Fletcher-- Doran ($1.75). Caught in a snow-storm on the Scottish Border, a young artist seeks shelter in a lonely, high-turreted house where he finds a pretty girl, her guardian, a cynical, mysterious amateur of the arts, and, on the mantlepiece, a copper box marked with a strange crest. Adventures come thick and fast, but there are no murders. The coil is unwound at last to a happy ending. A slight, debonair mystery story, lightly and engagingly executed.

THE WRONG SHADOW--Harold Brighouse--McBride ($2.00). Two clerks, Bassett and Wyler, scheme to become millionaires by inventing a new patent medicine. They quarrel and Wyler disappears, leaving behind a formula which he had imagined to be a fizzle but which Bassett discovers, uses and builds upon it a very substantial fortune. But his grapes are sour--he feels he owes at least half his fortune to Wyler. Wyler cannot be found, but his ectoplasm haunts Bassett's conscience. He does his best to salve said conscience, but ineffectively--and then, just at the wrong moment, Wyler reappears. However, do not be alarmed, for all turns out well. And, oh yes, the love interest is there. A some-what doughy comedy, which shows the dangers of killing a perfectly good fictional idea with too much kindness and far too many words.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE--Padraic Colum--Macmillan ($2.00). The cycle of Greek legends that concern Jason and the rest of his varsity crew most admirably retold for children by a poet and artist.