A Knave of Diamonds. By Keith Robertson. (William Paterson, Edinburgh.)—The
cover and the title of this book are most attractive; but all is not diamond that glitters, and the inside is imitation jewellery of a paste description. The book reads like a compound of studies in "Hugh Conway," Wilkie Collins, and Gaborian, assisted by selections from the publications of the Society for the Promotion of Psychical Research ; but the composition has not been well mixed. The story is presumably intended to be a mystery, bat it is a mystery which readers will find no difficulty in solving aomwhere about p. 60, though the ostenaible solution. is not reached till somewhere about p. 300. The hero is a marvel. Among other trifling incidents in his career, he manages to be thrown out of a Northern express going at
full speed-, and to alight safely in. a bundle of hay by the side of the line ; to have his eyes nearly' gongedout by a scientific practitioner of crime ; and to find an angel of loveliness in the daughter of a jeweller in Goswell Road The crowning incident of the story is "Dark Days" with a variation, but a variation of a kind which shows a curious want of art, as the heroine is actually made to shoot the villain of the story—the "Knave of Diamonds "—in the presence of her lover, who marries her the same night. The' deed is done in a "trance," it is trae ; but still, a heroine, like an Archbishop in old days, cannot afford to have the stain of human blood on her ; and the notion of marrying your heroine to her lover when her victim was barely cold, must be reprobated by every well.regulated novel. reading mind.
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