Moonfleet
by , Little, Brown $3.00.
Potpourri
Moortfleet was published in England at the end of the nineteenth century. This is its first appearance under an American imprint, and all fanciers of high adventure at its finest and most savory may be grateful for the event. Mnonfleet (the name of a town on the Channel coast of England) is fitted out with silver-shod pistols, discoveries in churchyards, the tramp of feet into old inns at night, the curse of the Black Mohunes (Mohune-fleet, Moonfleet), and the flash of a fateful diamond.
What it has that is missing in most contemporary tales of action is a style, an integrity, a mastery in its handling that brings to mind and is able to stand beside such pinnacles of the genre as Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
“There was my aunt’s best winter candle still burning away in the daylight, for no one had taken any thought to put it out; and Mr. Bailiff melts the wax at it, till a drop of sealing-wax falls into the grease and makes a gutter down one side, and then there is a sweating of the parchment under the hot wax, and at last on goes the seal.” That’s the tone, and a fine one.