much a book as a _rechauffe_ of newspaper articles, which alone will account for its formlessness and frequent changes of plane. Mr. TALBOT, confessing to a total ignorance of the German tongue, seems quite unconscious that this imposes certain limitations on his capacity to make an adequate survey of a difficult problem. * * * * * I may confess at once that I finished the first chapter of _The Woman of the Picture_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) in a mood of slight derision, induced by Mr. G.F. TURNER'S allowing one hero to say of the other that he had "the interminable limbs" of an aristocrat. To the end of the book indeed I was uncertain whether such occasional lapses were meant to illumine the character of the supposed speaker or were unintentional. But again to quote, this time a phrase in which Mr. TURNER clearly shares my own delight, "before we were through with the affair" such details had ceased to be of moment. The plain fact is that _The Woman of the Picture_ is the most breathless, irresistible piece of convincing impossibility you have read for ages. I decline to struggle with any transcription of the plot. On the wrapper you will observe the woman stepping bodily out of the picture, like the ancestors in the whisky advertisement; this, however, is a symbolic rather than an actual presentment. But there is plenty without it: a rightful heir, mountain castles amid the eternal snows, a villain (with sorceries), half-a-dozen attempted murders and the most hair-lifting duel imaginable. Soberly considered the whole business is a riot of delirium, belonging flagrantly to that realm where all the world's a screen, and all the men and women merely movies. But the unexpected charm of the book is that with the possible exceptions noticed above) it is told with a touch of distinction, even of subtlety, that invests its wildest audacities with an atmosphere of fantastic truth. In short, if Mr. G.F. TURNER has done nothing else he has at least enabled the fastidious to enjoy the thrills of a shocker while retaining their self-respect. * * * * *