The Scarlet Rider

386 pp. "Bertha Runkle (1879-1958) was a best-selling author of several historical romances." The Bookman had the following to say about The Scarlet Rider: "The scene of this new story is the Isle of Wight, the date is the period of the American Revolution, and the centre of interest is an aristocratic but impoverished family in which the title, in the absence of male heirs, will descend to the beautiful but headstrong and undisciplined daughter who has been left to bring herself up as best she could. Her unhappy neglected and invalid mother seldom leaves her own chamber, while her dissolute spendthrift father is, for the most part, away from home, engaged in diversions of which drinking and gaming form the mildest elements. At the opening of the story the whole neighbourhood is in a turmoil concerning a certain audacious highwayman, known only as the "Scarlet Rider", who has been terrorising all the southern coast of England. Consequently, when Lettice, the madcap daughter of Lord Yarracombe, finds a handsome young stranger hiding behind a chest in a cobwebbed room of the old house, it is only natural that she should leap to the conclusion that he is the highwayman in question, and quite in keeping with her adventurous spirit that she should seek to shield him by letting him masquerade as the new assistant butler. The situation is well developed and the whole tone of the narrative has a well sustained lightness with just a hint of tragedy lurking beneath the surface. But the one little fact which robs this moment of its promised bigness is that the secret of the story is far too transparent. It takes no special cleverness to discover the Scarlet Rider's identity before the book is one third read and the only remaining surprise is at the density of the other actors in the story who are phenomenally long in discovering the truth."