New Books Pluck

New Books Pluck

THOMAS THE LAMBKIN--Claude Farrere--Dutton ($2.00). Who wouldn't be a pirate? Granted Thomas Trublet's delectable natural aptitudes, no one could hesitate to embrace that active vocation. Thomas, Frenchman, mighty man of valor, ablest seaman of them all, butcherer of men, ravisher of women, man of his word (with reservations), sailed from the port of St. Malo to a career of blood and battle and of passion. He seized galleons, captured cities, slaughtered crews under the Jolly Roger. He was first ennobled, then hanged from his own yardarm by his Most Christian King. His undoing was brought about through a stormy love affair with a blodthirsty Spanish beauty who repulsed him in three attempted rapes and was finally won through his dramatic murder of her entire family. Farrere out-Sabatinis Sabatini and creates a sea-rover beside whom all others become as his ironic nickname--the Lambkin. The reader's only regret is at his final end--an end due only to the blindness of his love, which leads him to kill his best friend and finally to deliver himself to his enemies in order to show the faithless Spaniard that he is no coward. And as he mounts his gibbet comes the word from her that what befalls him is nothing to her, and that their child is none of his.