Judge — March 19, 1932 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGING THE BOOKS WE always been a sucker for the tragic disintegration of a fille de joie, if you will pardon our “French.” Show us one without a fleck of Camille theatricality to an ounce of her peasant honesty; show her un- affected, naive, unmoral, and greatly the victim; show her inescapably sol- dered to her sordid art; show her in- exorably moving towards a pitiful end that ries her high into blessedness —and you have us. Long before puts the finger on her (is this wri ing!), we'll be reading thru a haze. At the death we'll be practically no use sentimental wreck, and at the grave you'll have to lead us away gently. It's our great, soft heart. “That Girl,” therefore, by Jacques Deval, embodying these sad but not morbid ingredients, is thus our especial dish, and you can’t be mean enough not to like it. We hold it topnotch t edy, and we're not playing tennis with superlatives when we say so. It just isn’t another book of the week, which is what a lot of our enthusiasms around here amount to. It counts. Placed mainly in the Canal Zone, it tells an unvarnished but potently simple and dramatically sweeping story of Cherie, who did it because she didn’t know better, and, once yanked from her homeland, was overwhelmed with one riding passion: To regain her beloved France, which she loved with a patriotism that amounted to a lust and would shame the entire French cabinet itself. To this end, she scrapes and skimps at her unsavory living to make the required passage money. But misfortune pursues her, and she dies as a sacrifice to the espionage system surrounding the Panama Canal. Iron- ically, she gets back to France—but doesn’t know it. All of this is told flawlessly by this Jacques Deval, who is rapidly be- coming our favorite Frenchman. Last year he ruined a few of our ribs laugh- ing over “Wooden Swords,” a funny war book. Now he has about-faced, ; and dealt out what they call a human “Ie he straining at a gnat?” document, which is also a non-nause- “No, he swallowed a ‘Camel’!” ating spy story—no mean feat for even an acrobat. “See, Junior. This is the way to do it!” comicbooks.com