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There be novelists so fertile in literary resource or so catholic in their choice of subject that the reader is never sure, when he picks up their latest masterpiece, whether he is to have a comedy of manners, a proletarian tragedy, a tale of Court intrigue or a satire on the follies of the age.  To the steady-going devotee of fiction—­the reader on the Clapham omnibus—­this versatility is a source of annoyance rather than of attraction, and I accordingly take pleasure in stating that by those who like a light narrative, in which mystery and romance are pleasingly blended, the author of The Pointing Man can be relied upon to rill the bill every time.  Conformity to type is a strong point with this author as far as the mystery and romance are concerned, but within those limits he (or she) provides an admirable range of scene, character and plot.  In The Further Side of the Door (HUTCHINSON), the once handsome and popular hero emerges from a war-hospital badly disfigured and is promptly jilted by his fiancee and avoided, or so he thinks, by his acquaintances.  Disgusted he buries himself in an old haunted house in the wilds of Ireland and abandons himself to the practice of magic.  The result is highly successful, for he raises, not a spirit indeed, but something much more desirable to a lonely young man who has been contemplating suicide.  So much for the romance.  The mystery is provided by a villain, an enterprising young married woman, and the sinister denizens of a creepy boarding-house.  I heartily recommend Punch readers who like a mystery to buy the book and find out what happens.

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The publishers of Sir Limpidus (COLLINS) call it, in large print, a “new and amusing novel,” but I am not confident about your subscription to the latter part of that statement; for Mr. MARMADUKE PICKTHALL’S irony is either so subtle or so heavy (I cannot be positive which) that one may well imagine a not too dull-witted reader going from end to end without discovering the hidden intent.  The subject of the tale, which has no special plot, is a numbskull landowner, Sir Limpidus, son of Sir Busticus, lord of Clearfount Abbey, and type (according to Mr. PICKTHALL) of the landowning class that he evidently considers ripe for abolition.  As propaganda to that end he conducts his hero through the usual career of the pre-war aristocrat, sending him to public school and Varsity (those sufficiently broad targets), giving him a marriage, strictly de convenance, with the daughter of a peer, and finishing him off as a member of the Government, alarmed at Socialist hecklers and welcoming the War as likely to give a new direction to forces that threaten to become too strong for his well-meaning incompetence.  “It would rouse the ancient spirit of the people and dispel their madness....  Even defeat as a united nation would be better than ignoble peace with the anarchic mob supreme.”  Of course this may be highly amusing, but—­ The fact is that, with a disappointment the greater from having genial memories of a former book of his, I have to confess myself one of the dullards for whom Mr. PICKTHALL’S satirical darts fall apparently pointless.  I am sorry.