* * * * *
There is a great falling off in quality as between _The Pointing
Man_ and the anonymous authoress's latest effort, _The Man Who Tried
Everything_ (HUTCHINSON), a fact which may be partly accounted for
by the brief time elapsing between its appearance and that of its
immediate forerunner, _The Man from Trinidad_. Her new book is a war
spy story--an exacting form of fiction in any event--and deals with
German revolutionary machinations in the Orient. It fails because
it moves too rapidly and covers far too much ground. The writer has
neither the gift nor the general information necessary for this class
of adventurous fiction. Her genius lies in her power of reproducing
the atmosphere of crime and intrigue; but her Orient and her Orientals
seem to have lost their hold on the reader's imagination. And I
venture to remind her that it is fatal in this kind of story to
replace known facts by unnecessary fiction; for example, to speak, as
she does, of a German warship in the Indian Ocean as the _Bluecher_,
when all the world knows that that particular vessel was elsewhere.
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