Cirrus@Austlit

Following on from The Sign of the Glove, 'three principal characters are living in peace and prosperity after their adventures, and the story Is told by one of them, Colonel Peter Gantian, who takes up the main burden of the Incidents that follow on the reappearance of Leo Jask, a criminal and revolutionary, with whom they are all well acquainted and of whose death or existence there had been doubt. The troubles of Colonel Gantlan begin when the young son of one of the three good companions is kidnapped and spirited away to unknown places in London, where the hunt is vigoriously [sic] carried on by the colonel, aided by his former batman of the war. This is not a detective story, though it Is written In the style of the popular fiction of that class. It is full of strange disguisings and mysterious clues, and moves with life on every page, so that the Interest will be carried from day to day by our readers.'

Source:

'New Serial', Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 1932, p.4.

'"The Law of the Knife" again sees "Leathermouth," otherwise Colonel Gantian, Secret Service agent, confidant of Scotland Yard, at work in investigating the nefarious work of Russian agents in England. Chief among them is a juggler, whose feats of knife throwing on the stage are endowed with a sinister aspect when Colonel Gantian narrowly escapes death by that means, and, in particular, when a young woman in the clutches of the gang is killed on the stage when one of the knives with which the thrower Is "outlining" her body against a wall, penetrates her eye. Leathermouth is a danger to the Soviet and must be got rid of. The girl had warned him. So the murder takes place, but is attributed to death by misadventure, the juggler declaring that the girl had moved her head.

'The story of the attempts by the agent of the Russian Commissar, with whom Leathermouth has come into conflict, are told by a hand skilled in that class of narrative, and it will be found that, combined with the excellent style in which the various characters are handled, the serial will hold its interest unflagglngly from beginning to end.'

Source:

'New Serial', Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June 1934, p.3.

'The roving eye of his friend Wallington is attracted by a pretty woman, who, however, tries to blackmail him. When Wallington refuses to meet her demands, he is kidnapped and the details of his rescue provide many thrilling moments.'

Source:

'Crumpled Lilies', Sunday Times, 10 December 1933, p.3.

'The plot does not open, however, with the conventlonal corpse lying in a magnificently furnished flat. Only gradually does a feeling of strange, unknown forces envelop the group of people who confront the hero in the early chapters. He overtakes a girl on the road from London to Folkestone. She has a puncture in one of the back tyres of her grey two seater car; and does not know how to change the wheel; so Richard Saxenham (as the young man Is named) jumps out and offers to help her. She attracts him. So when (after he has performed the wheel-changing service and she has driven off), he finds In the roadway a green morocco case with an address at Folkestone in it, he feels no small satisfaction. The address proves to be that of a stone house, in which the girl lives with her uncle and a foreign couple. They seem an ill-assorted group. The young man's suspicions are aroused. Then, directly he returns to his hotel, a stranger he meets in the lounge begins unaccountably to ramble on to him about some diamond robbery that Is reported In the morning's newspaper. The mystery surrounding the family in the stone house deepens when Saxenham discovers that the stranger's activities are linked in some way with theirs. Presently the residents in the stone house disappear, leaving behind them the corpse beloved of writers of detective fiction, and it becomes the task of Scotland Yard to track them down again.'

Source:

'Our New Serial', Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May 1931, p.4.