* * * * * Miss F.E. MILLS YOUNG'S newest story has at least this much merit about it, that no one who has seen the title can complain thereafter of having been taken unawares by the course of the narrative. That is perhaps as well, for, having discovered in the opening chapters a sufficiently charming _Pamela_ living in perpetual honeymoon with a partner rich, good-looking and with no particular occupation to interfere with unlimited motor trips and dinner parties, we might have imagined the tale was going to remain a jolly meaningless thing like that all through, and so have been as much shocked as the heroine herself on reading the fatal letter. But, since we knew the book to be called straight out _The Bigamist_ (LANE), we could have no possible difficulty in foreseeing the emergence of that other wife from the buried past ready to pounce down on poor little _Pam_ at her happiest. And of course she duly appeared. Not that such happiness could in any case have lasted long, for the man was, flatly, a cur, not deserving the notice of any of the rather foolish women he managed to attract--there were three of them--and not particularly worth your attention either for that matter. Having said so much I can gladly leave the rest to your perusal, or, better perhaps, your imagination, only hinting that the conclusion has something of dignity that does a little to redeem the volume. But when all is said this is not Miss YOUNG at her best, the characters without exception being unusually stilted, the plot unpleasant, and the South African atmosphere, for which I have gladly praised her before now, so negligible that but for an occasional name and a page or two of railway journey the yarn might as well have been placed in a suburb of London or Manchester as in the land of delectable sunshine. * * * * * Mr. JOHN S. MARGERISON, in _The Sure Shield_ (DUCKWORTH) sees to it that our national pride in our Fleet is thoroughly encouraged. Whether he is describing a race against the Germans in times of peace, or a fight against odds with them in these days of war, we always come out top dog. Very good. But, at the same time, I am bound to add that some of his stories compelled me to make considerable drafts on my reserves of credulity before I could swallow them. So improbable are the incidents in one or two of them that I am inclined to believe that they must be founded on fact. However that may be, their author is an expert in his subject, and writes with a vigour that is very bracing and infectious. * * * * * [Illustration: _Tactful Customer (forestalling a rebuff at a coal order office)._ "OF COURSE, MISS, I DON'T EXPECT THAT YOU REALLY _SELL_ COALS, BUT I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD HAVE NO OBJECTION TO MAKING THEM A SUBJECT FOR CONVERSATION?" ] * * * * * Music in Mesopotamia.