Books: Sawdust Serial

STRANGE MOON—by T. S. Stribling— Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Author Stribling, sometimes called the Sinclair Lewis of the South, began his writing career with stories for Sunday-school publications. He passed on to plotty melodramas for paper-pulp magazines, rose to heights in Birthright and Teef-tallow. Strange Moon drops back to the pulp level. Possibly it is a resurrection from his serial days. Or perhaps it just reflects Author Stribling’s habit of writing in a reclining position.

In Venezuela, Eugene Manners, oil scout, “matches Yankee shrewdness against Latin cunning . . . and unscrupulous Dutch competitors.” The heroine is “Sola Merida . . . whose flamelike beauty had so ill a setting in a foul cafe.” Flamelike Sola appears at first as the daughter of Peon Pacheco. In the last chapter she is revealed as the entirely legitimate daughter and heiress of the aristocratic Toros.