Books: The Quest of Youth

THE QUEST OF YOUTH—Jeffery Farnol—Little Brown ($2.50). Sir Marmaduke Anthony Ashley John de la Pole Vane-Temperly not unnaturally grows tired of a solitude broken only by hearing his faithful servant John Hobbs speak his name in a respectful whisper through the corridors of a big mansion. In Hessian boots and quest of youth, he ventures over the blood-and-thunderous landscape on which he finds, among other adventures, his wife who had left him 20 years before and Eve-Ann Ash, the girl he kisses on the last page. This is after Jasper Shrig, detective, has made sure that Fiddling Jackie, not Sir Marmaduke, murdered the disagreeable Squire Brandish; after Mrs. Marmaduke has died; after Author Farnol has once more made readers, of whom there will be many, pant with romantic excitement no less hard than did less hardy readers at The Brood Highway.