* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE ABOVE GENTLEMAN IS SUPERSTITIOUS ON THE SUBJECT OF WALKING UNDER LADDERS.]

* * * * *

Up to the present time the crop of German spy-stories has been distinguished by quantity rather than by quality.  Possibly the authors, realising that the wildest flights of their highly-trained fancies could never match the actual machinations of the German Secret Service as revealed in the official news, have not put their hearts into the work.  In The Lost Naval Papers and other stories (MURRAY) Mr. BENNET COPPLESTONE has shown unusual boldness in connecting the activities of his super-policeman, Dawson, with the more prominent events of the War.  Indeed, I am not sure that the terror he professes to feel in the presence of the Scotland Yard official (for he tells his stories in propria persona) is not to some extent justified.  “Dora” is very sensitive and six months ago would never have permitted Mr. COPPLESTONE to reveal to our enemies either the bumptious egoism of a nameless First Lord or the platitudinous vacillations of an anonymous Premier, even in the interests of popular fiction.  Though we concede his audacity in allowing his superlative sleuth to stop a general strike of engineers by threatening them with martial law and to tempt the German fleet to come out by sending it false news of our battleship strength, or to enable the battle of the Falkland Islands to be won by piling dummy battle cruisers up outside Plymouth harbour, the merit of Mr. COPPLESTONE’S book does not lie in the complexity or vitality of his plots.  It lies in a keen sense of humour and clever character suggestion, and the recognition that the thing written about is of less importance than the manner of writing.  We earnestly desire that Mr. COPPLESTONE should devote another volume—­a whole one—­to the inimitable Madame Guilbert; but whatever he writes about will be welcome, provided it be written in the vein of the volume before us.

* * * * *

Out of such workaday elements as the hypnotic fascinations of a sleek music-master, the follies of a runaway schoolgirl and the well-disciplined affections of a most superior young gentleman, Mr. W.E.  NORRIS has contrived to create yet another new story, without infringement of his own or anyone else’s copyright.  Thanks to the incidence of War and the author’s skilful manipulation of Europe’s distresses (for once the KAISER’S intrusion into the middle of a peaceful—­almost too peaceful—­narrative is not unwelcome), the second half of The Fond Fugitives (HUTCHINSON) is better than the first.  Not, indeed, that such a wary hand as the writer has been so ill-advised as to follow his hero to Flanders, or even to let his heroine do so; but his wounded soldier, come home with sympathy and understanding grown big enough to realise that a girl, though indiscreet