The Witness for the Defence. By .A. E. W. Mason.
(Hodder and Stoughton. 6s.)—Although modern writers of fiction often leave an undeecribed interval of time in the middle of their novels, it must be confessed that the gap in Mr. Mason's The Witness for the Defence between the twelfth and thirteenth chapters is so wide as seriously to impair the continuity of the story. Some explanation should surely be given of the reason why Thresk, the barrister who is "the witness for the defence," should apparently entirely wash his hands of a woman with whom he was so deeply in love as Stella Ballantyne. Certainly he believed her to have killed her husband, but although this would disincline him to marry her, it would hardly, after he had procured her acquittal at her trial, have caused him to abandon her without the least attempt at discovering what had become of her. Had he found out her plans for the future the trap laid for him by Mr. Hazlewood, senior, at the end of the book, would have been of no avail. Mr. Hazlewood is the best character in the story, and the abrupt contrast in his attitude between a general wish to give a second chance to criminals and a most human desire to save his son from a criminal wife is described with considerable humour. The heroine and the man she marries are rather more conventional figures, but the plot of the story is good, and Mr. Mason as ever exercises with great success his admirable gift of carrying his readers along with him.
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