THE VALLEYS OF THE ASSASSINS

Good reading, this unusual story of adventure and exploration in a little known part of the world -- Persia and its environs. For those who like the Sven Hedin material, or the new Ben James' Secret Kingdom, this is made to order for armchair traveling. A woman explorer, too, lends peculiar glamor, and her spirited account of her encounters with the natives, her indomitable courage and resourcefulness in the face of actual danger and unrelieved hardship, makes one feel that sex is no barrier to what is generally considered almost wholly a male province. Northwest Luristan, the strange search for hidden treasure in the high mountains, the City of Larti, the forests of Aftab, the Gangir Valley, Baghdad, the Valley of the Assassins (particularly interesting to those who have read the new Omar Khayyam, by Harold Lamb) and so on. There is humor in the telling, and a real sense of the story teller's art.