Some part of the fascination that I found in _Tributaries_ (CONSTABLE) was perhaps due to the interest of a problem. On the cover I am told that the author "chooses to be anonymous in order that his story should not suffer from the least suggestion of a party bias." And of course, after reading this, I simply had to discover who it was. By the time I reached the last page I had formed a tolerably confident guess. But I will not commit myself further than to say that no one, however "well-known in Great Britain and America" (the publisher again is my authority), need be ashamed to own up to _Tributaries_, which is quite one of the best written novels of the year. It is the story of a modern demagogue, a young apostle of political nonconformity, part charlatan, part zealot, who comes to town from a provincial chapel, and ends up a glorious failure as a soured and unpopular Cabinet Minister. There is an unusual quality in the characterisation and humour of this story of _Maurice Sangster_. Page after page abounds with touches of observation which betray the practised hand. The end, in its dry, unemotional justice, approaches real tragedy. One small point. _Maurice's_ father-in-law, who hates and wishes to humiliate him, finds his opportunity when a turn of the party wheel throws the Minister out of office and into poverty. Her father thereupon allows _Mrs. Sangster_ fifteen hundred a year for household expenses on condition that _Maurice_, who is scraping a bare hundred by his pen, shall not learn of this help till the old man's selected moment for abasing him. An intelligent woman who read the tale objected that no man, even a journalist, could long remain ignorant that he was spending fifteen hundred pounds more than he earned. I think she had a case. But the book remains a remarkable one.