DR SCARLETT:
A Narrative of His Mysterious Behavior in the East. By Alexander Laing '25. Farrar and Rinehart, 1936- P- 338- $2-00.
Readers of sensational fiction who prefer exotic to domestic backgrounds will probably feel that "Dr Scarlett" is the best thriller Mr. Laing has produced. Such an opinion may be vindicated by the argument that blood-and-thunder yarns need both blood and thunder, that blood can be spilt anywhere and at any time, but thunder is the result of certain geographic and atmospheric conditions, and that the best thuqder is "thunder in the East." From "Dr Scarlett," it appears that Mr. Laing's own recent journeyings east of Suez have him to change his old witchbroth formula to a new and more powerful incantation. Of course we were thrilled when the cadaver of Gideon Wyck was discovered in a placid New England college, and when the homicidal motives of Nicholas Holtz blasted the humdrum villages of Pennsylvania; but we are more thrilled when the eupeptic, sane, benevolent Dr. Scarlett, a thoroughly regular guy, soars with his Chinese friends in a Sikorsky airplane above the Himalayas, crashes in the jungle, struggles against Oriental pestilence, and ventures among Tibetan vampires.
Perhaps the sub-title of the book should read "his behavior in the mysterious East," for Dr. Scarlett's behavior is not really mysterious nor mystifying. In this first novel about him, he is more a Dr. Watson than a Sherlock, and the real protagonist is the mad missionary Stebbins. But we may surmise and hope that Mr. Laing is planning to write a series of studies in Scarlett, and that, the doctor will shine with greater brilliance when he stops making puns and acquires an even larger embonpoint. Already fat, he must grow fatter, for it is a well-known fact that some of the most brilliant detectives in fiction are lazy and obese. As he develops, Dr Scarlett may certainly become a character as definite and full-bodied and entertaining as John Dickson Carr's Dr. Fell, or Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, or any of the other first-rate fleshy sleuths descended from Sherlock's brother Mycroft.
