"In his hot indignation his yellowish face had in places turned blackish: literally, black streaks ran from the corners of his lips upwards and downwards, and from the inner corners of his eyes." If you read that sentence in a novel with Mr. EDGAR JEPSON'S name on the cover, and found that the passage was a description of a man named _Shadrach Penny_, would you not, as I did, settle down comfortably in your armchair and wait with perfect confidence for the human zebra to murder somebody in the most fascinatingly brutal manner? But he did not do anything of the kind. I think that the fact that I was disappointed in, and even seriously bored by, _The Man Who Came Back_ (HUTCHINSON) was largely due to the mild, dull way in which the story developed. And yet I think I could have forgiven the absence of lurid sensationalism if the book had been a good book of its kind. It is not. It is so crude and amateurish that it is difficult to believe that a professional writer could have written it. Mr. JEPSON, like most other authors, has had the idea of modernising the story of the Prodigal Son. He adheres to the original story closely in one respect, for _Roland Penny's_ first meal in his old home consists of roast veal, but he departs from it in making _Roland_, so far from wasting his substance, amass a large fortune among the husks and swine. I do not know how to classify _The Man Who Came Back_. It is not a novel of incident, for nothing happens in it. It is not a novel of character, for there is no attempt at any but the crudest character-drawing. It is just a six-shilling novel, and I do not see what else one can say of it. Mr. JEPSON must do one of two things. He must either brace up and make his style less irritatingly slipshod, or he must give us a few more murders. If we cannot have literary elegance he must give us blood. * * * * * Lieutenant L. B. RUNDALL, of the 1st Gurkha Rifles, author of _The Ilex of Stra-Ping_ (MACMILLAN), was not only a soldier and a sportsman, but a writer with a most keen sense of the beauty of nature and the beauty of words. Children should love these Himalayan sketches, for Mr. RUNDALL, from material which in some cases was admittedly slight, could weave a tale full of magic and charm. The story of the old brown bear in "The Scape-goat" may not greatly stir the heart with the thrill of adventure, but the hero has attractions that no child and no man that has not forgotten his childhood could resist. An inconspicuous notice in the book tells us that the author fell in action towards the close of 1914. I salute his memory. Rich as we are to-day in authors who can write enchantingly of birds and animals, I feel a sense of personal sorrow in the loss of one whose work gave so fair a promise of high achievement. * * * * *