In The Thunderbolt (UNWIN) Georgina Bonham, at home and amongst her intimates, delighted in small-talk.  It flowed in an unceasing stream, particularly when Dr. Rayke, her chief adviser and confidant, came to tea and ate his favourite currant-and-sultana cake.  Everything, in fact, prepares you for one of the tamest of all tame novels, when suddenly the “Thunderbolt” of the title remembers its attributes and bursts from a clear sky.  Thenceforward Mr. GEORGE COLMORE’S book is of a particularly painful character.  For the horrors which here accumulate on horror’s head I find no adequate excuse, even though the villain of the story is a German.

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Blanche Maddison, the heroine of The Obstinate Lady (HUTCHINSON), might without any excess of rudeness be called pig-headed.  With her case in my mind let me advise women who have married disgusting men to seek whatever shelter the law may give them rather than adopt her persistently cold and aloof manner.  I hardly wonder that her husband found her a little exasperating.  We all know Mr. W.E.  NORRIS as a novelist who can be trusted not only to tell an intriguing story, but also to construct it irreproachably.  But here, I think, he has penalised himself with the materials he has chosen.  However he sets bravely to work to wipe off his handicap, and very nearly succeeds.  If I cannot credit him with complete success it is because the subsidiary tale of love which he gives us is really too anaemic.  Yet I can conceive of people so fed up with the makers of blood-heat fiction that Mr. NORRIS’S lukewarm method will afford them a pleasant change.

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However cleverly Mr. WILLIAM CAINE may treat his theme, The Wife Who Came Alive (JENKINS) is only another version of the antiquated mother-in-law business. Doll Brackett was a beautiful American girl, and if she had not been idiotically idolised by her mother and could have realised the difference between pounds and pence she might have made an excellent wife for George March, of Hampstead, portrait-painter. Mrs. Brackett was not actively hostile to this marriage, but after losing her fortune she began to disapprove of the economy which March preached and tried in vain to practise.  Persuaded that her idol was no longer becomingly enshrined, she proceeded to make trouble between husband and wife, and they separated.  Then followed a very lean time both for Mrs. Brackett and her daughter, until at last the former made such an outrageous proposal that Doll came to her senses.  You will easily believe that this sort of subject offers no very favourable outlet for Mr. CAINE’S particular gifts, but the confidential style in which he tells the story is distinctly engaging, and as a warning to foolish mothers-in-law it is something more than adequate.

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