Word: fictions
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...author of the "Father Brown" detective tales recently pointed out with a good deal of cogency, the methods of deduction employed by the famous Holmes are more effective within the covers of a work of fiction than in actual life. The real detective, however shrewd a ratiocinator, rarely meets with a situation where the source of a mystery can be reached by a straight chain of syllogisms. In detecting the perpetrator of a crime, the real detective usually examines all the suspects and finds the guilty party by a winnowing process of elimination, or by the even more haphazard plan...
...actual life Dr. Doyle, has not succeeded in unravelling any of the great mysteries that baffle the police. Yet so powerful is the illusion exerted by his fiction that the average man persists in believing him a master of inference. By a similar fallacy, or perhaps for the fun of the thing, he has been consulted by the London police regarding a number of cases, but never with very noteworthy results. Even in the realm of fiction he has not shone analytically as Poe did when he prophesied the conclusion of Dickens's "Barnaby Rudge" after reading the first chapters...
...this first work of Mr. Marquand's. But we have by no means reached the point of satiety, and sincerely hope that the author who is, by the way, a Harvard graduate of the Class of 1915, will not make this his sole adventure in this field of fiction. Frankly it is not, nor does it pretend to be, an inspiring book. You do not turn the last page with a fierce concentration, nor, having finished, filing the volume across the room with a tensely muttered "God!" and stride out to lift the Universe. "But on the other hand...
...negro servant. Oh yes. There is also in the story a charming Mademoiselle de Bianzy, who adds a certain interest; but it seems almost as if the author had placed her in the center of the maelstrom rather as an after-thought and to full certain fundamental requirements of fiction; had, lifted her in over the top as it were...
...their worth and the confidence in the juries which made them. Even the security or that court of highest appeal, the "Academic Francaise" is feared for. French critics, storm, protest, and sign manifestos,--but the only effect so far has been to call forth the announcement of a new fiction prize of 30,000 francs. Present day prophets the "wise one", predict a day when French authors will be obliged to conceal the fact that their work was "Crowned",--after this "disease" has run its logical course. The dimculty today is that the "disease", apparently...