HOSTILE VALLEY.
By Ben Ames Williams '10. E. P. Dutton & Co., Publishers,
New York. 1934.
Partial to Mr. Williams and always interested in matching wits with him about the solutions of some of the mysteries that Friendship, Maine, furnishes, I found Hostile Valley just as pleasant and absorbing as any of the others. Given certain types and certain situations the writer works out with them against the somber background of lonely Maine countryside, this being the story of a group of people among whom a suicide and two murders raise considerable havoc. It is the Williams analysis and the Williams reasoning that make these Friendship books the hobbies of a certain reading group. In this story, submitted by the way to a household full of people in a Maine island resort and read through and approved by all, there is something of the method of Captain Marryatt. The reader begins, as always, at the country store, the prelude taking Jim Saladine to the edge of Hostile Valley and leaving him there during eight breathless chapters before the story catches up with itself. Then the various contacts and episodes precipitated by the arrival of the newcomer Saladine, stream before the eyes in quick succession; the author has not disdained the old New England plot of the house divided against itself with estranged members of the same family inhabiting each wing. There is much ingenuity in the way in which the murderer is hanged in homemade fashion, and this ingenuity throughout, coupled of course with Mr. Williams' other literary qualities, makes his books interesting and pleasant.
