AustLit

'Arthur Gask's new novel is more of a romance than a mystery story, with his familiar figure of Gilbert Larose appearing only briefly towards the end – and then only with some advice to a young woman who has shot a blackmailer. This young woman, Mr. Gask's heroine, a beautiful and stately Dora, who is brought up in France where her English mother is married to a French wine merchant. She becomes a nurse in a London hospital – with her heart set on the opportunity of making a good marriage. Opportunity comes closer when she gets the post of a nurse in a noted doctor's rooms, where she is brought in contact with some of the best of titles society people, many of whose names were so often mentioned in the social columns of the newspapers. But it doesn't knock on her door until she is nursing a wealthy old woman, whose nephew falls in love with Dora –and incidentally falls foul of his aunt by doing so. But a smart and not too ethical solicitor upsets the aunt's new will in which she has cut off the nephew who by now has married Dora, and Dora soon is Lady Stroud, moving amongst the best society people. But an unscrupulous doctor threatens blackmail and worse–for Dora was once unwittingly mixed up with a shade Institute of Perfect Health–and the distraught girl, in defence of her honor shoots him. Dora hides her crime–and everybody, including Larose, rallies to her aid in fooling Scotland Yard. In the end she finds that the titled judge who is to try an innocent man for the crime she has committed is her real father–and everything moves swiftly to understanding all round and a completely happy ending.'

Source:

'Latest Fiction', Advertiser, 17 September 1949, p.6.