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I gather that The Son of Tarzan (METHUEN) is the fourth of a Tarzan series by Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, who specialises in an exciting brand of hero, half ape, half man. Tarzan pere had been suckled and reared by a proud ape foster-mother, and after many jungle adventures had settled down as Lord Greystoke.  This latest instalment of the Tarzan chronicles finds the Greystokes somewhat anxious about the restlessness and unconventional tastes of their schoolboy son, who inherits not only his father’s vague jungle longings but all his explicit acquired characteristics, so that when, with the decent old ape, Akut, disguised as his invalid grandmother, he sails away from England and plunges into the wild he promptly becomes the terror of the jungle and bites the jugular veins of hostile man and beast with such a precision of technique that he becomes king of the ape-folk, as his father, Tarzan, had been before him.  Plausibility, even within the limits of his bizarre plan, is not Mr. BURROUGHS’ strong suit, but exciting incident, ingeniously imagined and staged, with swift movement, undoubtedly is.  If the author wouldn’t let his favourites off so easily and would give their enemies a better sporting chance, he would more readily sustain the illusion which is of the essence of real enjoyment in this kind of fantasy.  But I imagine the normal human boy will find nothing whatever to complain of, and to him I chiefly commend this yarn.

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The Tale of Mr. Tubbs (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is one of those which hover agreeably between low comedy and refined farce, in a world which, being frankly to the last degree improbable, makes no urgent demand for belief.  Sometimes indeed (as I have observed before with Mr. J.E.  BUCKROSE) the characters themselves are more credible than the way in which they carry on.  Thus while Mr. Tubbs, the middle-aged and high-principled champion of distress, is both human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued society of a squint-eyed maid-servant and her yellow cat, turned adrift through his unfortunate attempts to befriend them.  I think I need not tell you all, or even a part of all, that happens to Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, or do more than hint at the trials of this poor knight-errant, mistaken for a burglar and a libertine, till the hour when (the book being sufficiently full) he is rewarded with the hand of beauty and the prospect of what I will venture to call a Buckroseate future.  They were no more than his due for remaining a consistent gentleman amid the temptations of farce.  One word of criticism however; surely Mr. BUCKROSE has made a study of The Boy’s Own Paper less intimate than mine if he supposes that a story with such a title as “The Red Robbers of Ravenhill” could ever have gained admittance to those chaste columns.