Books: Tart of Gold

SUZY — Herbert Gorman — Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

For those with such an appetite for romance that they gag at no improbability, Author Gorman’s latest concoction will be a toothsome dish. More finicky gourmets will rise before Suzy is all swallowed. A companion piece to Jonathan Bishop (TIME, Dec. 4, 1933), this tale of a golden-hearted tart is set against the more modern background of the War.

Suzy was never a professional. The U. S. niece of a London publican’s wife, she went to England to dance in a variety show. When she lost her job she became a decoration around her aunt’s bar. For something better to do, she took up with a loud-mouthed Jew named Harry Bexler. Her real adventures began when a German agent broke into their bedroom, shot Harry because he knew too much about his boss’s secret business. Suzy left England in a hurry, took refuge in Paris. There she sang in a cabaret, shared a room with a fanatic Socialist, picked up geography, table manners and general intelligence from the quickening Parisian atmosphere. Her affair with a handsome French nobleman was purely platonic until he went to the front; then she discovered she was no platonist. She flew to his side as he lay wounded in a hospital, but Mata Hari was there before her.

The Baron’s son recovered, married Suzy in a desperate attempt to forget the spying vampire. Through Suzy’s efforts Mata Hari was arrested, convicted; her husband was given the tasty job of commanding the firing squad. Soon after, he went off to the front, was glad to be killed. Suzy, by now indistinguishable from a lady of the ancient regime, married another French nobleman. But this one was bald, had no yearning for vampires.