The Sign of the Snake. By Brownlow Fforde. (A. H.
Wheeler and Co.)—We like Mr. Fforde better when he is reproducing the humours of Anglo-Indian life than when, as here, he tries to beat the writers of blood-curdling romances on their own ground. Up to the point, indeed, where the story becomes positively farcical, The Sign of the Snake is really about as sensational as it well can be,—with its murders, its poisonings, its terrible com- pact between father and son to pursue a still more terrible ven- detta to its bitter end. But these horrors pall upon one, and the appearance of the police upon the scene is a trifle too suggestive of comics opera. It may be allowed, however, that the hatred between the Milvains and the Merton is well brought out, and that the poisoning " business " is managed with a skill which even the creator of Sherlock Holmes could not have surpassed. Essentially, however, Mr. Fforde is too good-natured a writer to stick long to the gruesome line of fiction.
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