Fighting Fiction

Rafael Sabatini's 34th adventure story, The Sword of Islam (Houghton Mifflin, $2.50), compares favorably with his best work (Scaramouche, Captain Blood). As dramatic as Italian opera without music, it is as ornately composed as Italian pastry. Laid in the 16th Century, it concerns one Prospero Adorno, wide-browed, slim-hipped soldier-poet, who first appears as commander of a naval squadron blockading Genoa. He changes sides several times, several times buys and talks his way out of captivity, is dishonored, vindicated, at last makes mincemeat of the Moslems, wins beautiful Gianna. Who fights whom is immaterial--the main thing is that they fight.

Reeking with sentiment and no-good corpses, Zane Grey's 36th novel, Knights of the Range (Harper, $2), tells how beautiful 20-year-old Holly Ripple took over her father's New Mexico cattle empire, reformed a tough bunch of desperadoes, who killed off every rustler in sight. Zane Grey at his best, it is a reminder that probably no other U. S. writer is treated with such indulgence year after year. Zane Grey readers may grow up, but they seldom get away.

Part ancient Irish saga, part blarney, Sons of the Swordmaker, by Maurice Walsh (Stokes, $2.50), concerns the five sons of Orugh the Swordmaker. They are an accomplished bunch. Delgaun lops the head off of fabled Fergus the Killer, wins an enigmatic redhead named Alor. Flann One-Hand wanders over Ireland itself, gets mixed up with Fer Rogain, Conaire the King, cools a rustic spitfire named Dairne. Most adventurous part of the tale is the oldtime Gaelic talk: Says Delgaun of Alor: "She has red hair and she stays in a man's mind. Brief enough, but enough. She draws men and men draw her--one pull goes with the other always. . . ."

Unlike these three old-fashioned rousers, Royal Regiment, by Gilbert Frankau (Dutton, $2.50), is as modern as gas masks for babies. Laid in 1936-37, it tells what happens when Major "Rusty" Rockingham, bachelor scion of an aristocratic British military family, falls in love with the dazzling American wife of his hardbitten colonel. Nothing happens: at the last moment both Rockingham and Camilla renounce their honorable passion for the greater honor of Empire. The Wally Simpson case, which breaks simultaneously, makes a well-pointed contrast.

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