The Latest Conan Doyle
The Latest Conan Doyle is an article published in the Daily Express on 14 august 1913.
The Latest Conan Doyle
The World Asleep for Twenty-Eight Hours.
[PUBLISHED TO-DAY.]
"The Poison Belt." By A. Conan Doyle. (Hodder and Stoughton, 6s.)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's new romance, "The Poison Belt," is very short, and although its protagonists are the same as in "The Lost World," it has few of the thrills of that ingenious story.
The world passes through a belt of poisoned ether, and all life (except that of the amoeba) comes to an end. The great Professor Challenger had anticipated the catastrophe from certain preliminary phenomena, and he alone had taken steps to fight the poison. With his wife and his three friends. Professor Summerlee. Lord John Roxton, the sportsman, and Mr. E. D. Malone, the journalist, he shut himself into a sealed room in his country house with five cylinders of oxygen, and the oxygen had sufficient bracing power to keep them alive while the rest of humanity appeared to die.
After the passage through the belt the professor and his friends motored through the dead villages and cities. But a few hours afterwards the world was alive again. The seeming death was only catalepsy.
Sir Arthur tells his story with all his characteristic skill and with several split infinitives — "to seriously complain" and "to deliberately anticipate" are two we have found. "The Poison Belt" will make a railway journey enjoyable, provided that the journey be no more than a hundred miles.
