Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 239

BY VINCENT STARRETT fimnit a BOOKS ALIVE IIEN THE GREAT Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. old inhabitants will remember, a troublesome Scotch family named Stuart took over the throno of England and clung to it obstinately, and more or less continuously, for the next 83 years. There have been angry differences of opinion about the dynasty ever since. The briefest historian of the tribe is Eleanor Farjeon, who puts its story this way: Four Stuart kings there were, whose names Were James and Charles and Charles and James. The first, as history makes plain, Was ugly, greedy, gross, and vain.

The second, it must be allowed, Was dense, pernickety, and proud. The third, if 1 make no mistake, Was an incorrigible rake. The fourth combined, it seems to me, The vices of the other three. Later, after a short period of repose, there was one Stuart, Queen Anne, whose whole life, reign, and death were a somewhat dull anti-climax to the tragic drama of her kinsmen. According to Miss Farjeon, Anne "wore a pretty gown, and almost looked alive underneath her crown." A LL OF WHICH is perfectly true, it would appear, and yet there is something more to be said about the comedy and tragedy of the Stuart dynasty.

Scores of sentimental poets and novelists, Including Scott and Stevenson, have helped to romanticize its more colorful members; and, whatever their faults, they were clearly a picturesque lot of troublemakers. If you are interested In them, J. P. Kenyon's "The Stuarts: A Study in English Kingship Macmillan, $5 is the best single volume on the tribe as a family that I have seen; it is brilfiant, original, and admirably balanced. And it is immensely readable.

I might add, for her admirers, that there is little in the book about Mary, Queen of Scots, most glamorous of Stuart monarchs. Regrettably, my own romantic inter, est in Mary ceased abruptly, some years ago, when I read, somewhere that she was 6 feet tall Dr. Kcnyon has nothing to report on this subject. AM SUNDAY'S child," E. T.

A. Hoffman once said, A "with the power to see things invisible to other men." However that may be, his was a unique personality and his influence is still at work in the world. A minor now major figure of the Romantic period in Germany, scholarship traces his influence in such disparate writers as Hans Andersen, Alexandre Dumas, Nathaniel Haw-thorne, the Bronte sisters, and even Longfellow and Mrs. Hemans! His favorite theme of dual personality may have inspired Stevenson's "Markheim" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde." His influence on Toe has been the subject of dozens of Ph.D. theses. A composer himself, as well as a poet and painter, a number of important musical works by others owe their literary germ to some of his fantastic stories not the least Offenbach's popular "tales of Hoffmann." His stories are still good reading and it is useful to have a modern translation of the best of them available: "Tales of Hoffmann" Grove Press, $2.45, edited by Christopher Lazare, a paperback in the publisher's Jine series of Evergreen Books. The, curious fancies, altho dated now, reflect the strangeness of their creator, a dreamer astray in a world to whose values he has given his own reversed significances. CUDDEN THOUGHT on the state of literature and the world: There are greater men dead, I suspect, than any now living; and it is difficult to imapino iht ih future will produce anything better than the best of them.

S- A International Adventure, Intrigue THE ACHILLES AFFAIR, by Berkely Mather Scribner, 255 pages, $3.50. THE DARK ROAD, by James Cross Messner, 191 pages, $3, If A' I-1. Reviewed by Robert L. Shebi devised, admirably written, and unflagging in interest. As the festering trouble in Cyprus comes to a head, events of 10 years past in the life of Peter Feltham, the narrator, form a thread of circumstance that binds him to the principals an- The contemporary pattern of international affairs In Europe and the middle' east is the backdrop for both of these adventure tales, of which The Achilles Affair is far and away the better.

It is a thriller of superior quality artfully i fit. til' other Briton and a Greek woman. They meet again after an attempt is made on his life because he can identify a communist agent who is to exploit the strife on Cyprus. Feltham knows the agent from World War II, when Feltham and his countryman served together on secret army liaison missions to Greek partisan groups. His adventures in the Balkans form the first half of the novel a highly dramatic narrative in itself from which the intrigue of the second half is expertly drawn.

In the echoes of the first blasts of Cypriot violence the long course of events involving Feltham and the other two runs to a deadly, ironic climax. The author's ambition is to write "two good, taut thrillers a year." In this one, his first, he has set a high standard with a rare and effective combination of drama, humor, and irony. "The Dark Road" is a vigorous piece of melodrama, in which an American in West Germany goes into the communist zone after a little black notebook left by a defecting high level Russian who didn't 6th printing 60,000 copfel 3 Berkely Mather friend secretly a top ranking hush-hush man who got him out of a jam. He brings- back the note-" book after a cross-country escape, plus the disillusioned German pastor who has it and the pastor's niece, who is beautiful but scarred. The notebook contains the formula for a highly virulent method of bacterial warfare, but the pastor, an ex-scientist, destroys it without interference from the American.

Various nasty persons cause complications in the escapade, but nothing permanent. The eubsidiary characters are more clearly defined than the central one, particularly the pastor, who has mankind on his conscience. The story moves briskly and efficiently, save for boudoir scenes added, surely, for spice and some extraneous moralizing on burocratic a i zations added, perhaps, for spite. Hollywood Horseplay JONATHAN, by Russell O'Neil Appleton-Century-Crofts, 214 pages, $3.75. Reviewed by Seymour Korman Jonathan Cartwright, a professionally heavy drinking Hollywood writer, swilled a load of tequila in Mexico one night, angered a witch, and she turned him into a horse.

From this fantastic beginning Russell O'Neil has developed a slender novel that has many moments of high hilarity as the steed Jonathan wreaks revenge and havoc on the movie company making a western "epic" on Mexican location. The zany colt, with Jonathan's guiding intelligence, proceeds to teach the genuine beasts in the corral how to tango. He sits down suddenly, unseating his rider, when he should be chasing the bad Indians. He ruins a romantic garden scene by stepping on the guitar belonging to the leading man, Bruce Gentry, whom the human Jonathan detests. He plunges into a dinner party, chomping up the food and scattering the guests.

He wrecks a robbery scene by carrying the money bags into the bank before Gentry can come to the rescue. Of the movie company, only Jonathan's girl friend, Carol, who had been at the witch baiting, is aware of the horse's identity. She meets with the beast nightly, mixing buckets full of martinis for him. He conveys his ideas of script changes to her with neighs and hoof gestures. How does all this end? Does Jonathan regain human estate? What happens to the film? Suffice to say, there is an ironic switch, in Hollywood style, to finish off a few hours of enjoyable reading.

ntrmr eugene kinkead. The book 11 A UVttlXY that tells why so many American' "ffrj POW's collaborated with the enemy in the Korean War. A greatly ex HUT OIS patided version of the famous New Yorker article. $3.93 nnnnAnn THAT change thi U4UUAUi4 WORLD. "The forces that shape tha A unsettled times in which we live I JkAlkU and y.

Times. $3.75 make it. He goes to help a "Life would be tolerable but for its George Bernard Shaw. APRIL 12, 1959 PART 4 PAGE 5 All BOOKSTORES W.W. NORTON COMPANY fatUtftf.