The Leavenworth Case. By Anna Catherine Green. (Strahan.)— This is
a Collins-Gaboriau kind of story ; but while its machinery does not creak so continuously as that of Mr. Wilkie Collins's later novels, it is deficient in the easy realism of the author of "Le bossier, 113." There is nothing convincing about The Leavenworth Case, and the suspected but innocent persons are not very interesting ; but there is a good deal of ingenuity in the plot, and, as the law proceedings introduced are American law proceedings, we do not know whether the author has avoided the perils that environ lady novelists—and, indeed, gentlemen novelists also—who meddle with criminal procedure. A false air of reality is sought to be given by facsimiles of a torn letter and a signature, but this fails to con- vince ; the landlady, who hides and helps the concealed girl, is too plain a repetition of Anne Catherick's friend in " The Woman in White," and the incident of poison being sent in a letter as a pre- tended cure, is identical with the central incident of Mrs. Cashel }They's story " No Sign."
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