Mr. Broom and his Brother. By Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick. (Chapman
and Hall. 68.)—There is no moment more full of adventure than when an accomplished writer sets out on a new road. Perhaps, in Mrs. Sidgwick's case, necessity has been the mother of invention : she could hardly expect to find an audience now for her tales of happy Anglo-German relationships, and has diverged so widely from her usual paths that the hero of her latest novel actually refuses to marry the German Princess assigned to him. She has written, to surprise us, a story which is half romantic and half detective—a story (or, rather, two loosely connected stories) all about Katavia and its splendid brother Princes, and an English doctor who makes a practice of murdering his patients, and some other terrible villains who are killed in the end. The military uniform of ICatavia is white and gold, like that of Zenda ; the cities are, we are sure, in the same country, and these fresh adventurers bring with them something of the familiar and delightful thrill. But, if Mrs. Sidgwick means to go on in this always welcome line of fiction, we hope that she will tell a tale even more thickly crowded with incidents and emotions, a romance even more shamelessly romantic.
Previous page
