If you protest that the resulting situation is not only wildly
improbable but becoming a stock-in-trade of our novelists, I must
admit the first charge, but point out that the authors here secure
originality by making the deception an unintended one. _John Tempest_,
who in the hardships of his escape has lost memory of his own
identity, never ceases to protest that he is at least not the other
_John_ for whom the members of the _Seneschal_ family persist in
taking him--a twist that makes for piquancy if hardly for added
probability. However, the inevitable solution of the problem provides
a story entertaining enough, though not, I think, one that will
obliterate your memory of others, incomparable, from hands to which we
all owe a debt of long enjoyment.
I read _Inisheeny_ (METHUEN), as I believe I have read every story by
the same hand, at one sitting. Whose was the hand I will ask you to
guess. Characters: one Church of Ireland parson, drily humorous, as
narrator; one lively heroine with archaeological father, hunting for
relics; one schoolboy; one young and over-zealous R.I.C. officer on
the look-out for concealed arms; poachers, innkeepers, peasants, etc.
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