Replacement

THE RECKONING--Leane Zugsmith-- Smith & Haas ($2.50). As the Old Guard of U. S. novelists gradually dies or fades away without surrendering, new recruits are unostentatiously closing up gaps in the ranks. When the next dress parade is held, alert reviewers will see among the new faces that of Author Leane Zugsmith. Her fourth novel, The Reckoning, is a book of such competent maturity that it qualifies her automatically for a place in the second rank. In the regimental line her position is a little left of centre. Carolyn was a public-school teacher in a tough quarter of Manhattan. Intelligent, honest, fairly good at her racking job, she was engaged but not happy. Oliver was a poverty-and ambition-ridden lawyer who haunted the Criminal Courts Building, grimly determined to get ahead without truckling to Tammany. Metropolitan coincidence brought them tragically together. Young Castie Petrella, one of Carolyn's more difficult pupils, a sullen boy who pined for a big, bad reputation, tried to impress his gang by stealing a car. He was caught almost immediately, sent to jail. Carolyn was the only person who understood why he had done it, but her vague inquiries were powerless to help him, until she discovered amiable Amy Turk, wife of the man who owned the car. Together they went to Oliver.

Oliver found Carolyn more interesting than the hopeless case; soon they were in love. When Amy met a Tammany lawyer and made eyes at him, Castie soon got a parole and Amy's husband the horns he had long deserved. Oliver, torn between his ambition and Carolyn's faith in him, nearly went mad, thought of killing her. Instead, he sank his scruples and blackmailed his way into the Tammany trough, Castie, out of jail but still an unconsidered gangsterling, made another attempt to show the world by holding up his benefac tress, Amy, shot her by mistake. Oliver, his eye on forensic laurels, foolishly took the job of defending him. Oliver's smoothly resentful colleagues tricked him into a felony, wrecked his career, drove him out of town. Carolyn would have gone with him, but he ran away from her. Author Zugsmith's Manhattan, a city of slums, grimy schools, furtive assignations, venal officials, speakeasies, dingy hall bedrooms, cigar-stuffy offices and law courts, is not a pleasant metropolis but it is a long way from being a city of the dead. The speech of its inhabitants, broken, illiterate, suggestive, rings like true coin of the realm, worn from much handling. And the scene is presided over by a creator who tempers her justice with mercy.

The Author. Leane Zugsmith is made up of opposites. Kentucky-born (1903), she has been a Manhattanite for nine years. Onetime publicity head for the late blatant Publisher Horace Liveright, she is herself far from blatant, shrinks from publicity. She is pretty but unmarried. In getting material for The Reckoning she investigated New York's Welfare Island (before the recent raid; TIME, Feb. 5). had a hard time seeing anything but the chapel.

Other books: Goodbye & Tomorrow, All Victories Are Alike, Never Enough.

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