Books: Bats

Bat

THE BAT — A Novel from the Play by Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood — Doran ($2). Now there is a chance for all who were too young, busy, distant or improvident to see one of this era’s most satisfactory spine-chillers on the stage, to read it in a book. One suspects that one of Mrs. Rinehart’s literarily inclined sons —Alan, the publicity man, or Stanley, a still-higher-up of their mother’s publisher — is the unnamed “third person” who alleges he was a nervous derelict after transcribing from scenes to chapters the ghoulish excitement that takes place, in and about Manhattan, when the Mark of the Bat begins to be found near people with bullet-holes in their ribs, and in a house with a secret room.