Mixed Fiction

THE NORTHERN LIGHT, by A. J. Cronin (308 pp.; Little, Brown: $4), finds Novelist Cronin (The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom) crusading again and moralizing again, but the muscles of his indignation have sagged. His wide-open target is the English "popular" press, which runs to sex, sadism and trivia. Small-town Newspaper Publisher Henry Page seems hardly the man to lift his lance off the ground, much less to slay the dragon. He has been twice mayor of Hedleston, and is the great-great-grandson of the founder of the respectable Northern Light. Unfortunately, he is the kind of noble but dull character who is ready to give those in need the stuffed shirt off his back.

Henry gets an offer of -L-100,000 for the Northern Light from a wicked, sensation-mongering London press lord. When he refuses, the villainous Londoners go to work on him. They bring in their own paper, hire away Henry's old employees, grab his old advertisers, buy the very building he prints in. They even gull his giddy daughter into an interview in which she announces her admiration for their paper. Poor Henry is brought to his knees, and to bringing out the Northern Light by duplicating machine. That starts rallying British readers to the underdog, and in the end, after other trials that the reader may endure less readily than Cronin's hero, the Northern Light shines on.

Author Cronin is, as always, on the side of right, and few authors have ever made the right so palatable to so many (total sales of Cronin books in the U.S. alone: 7,000,000 copies). This time, what with tired writing, so lugubrious a hero, and the skimpiest knowledge of newspapers, the right may not be enough.

STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET, by Evan Hunter (375 pp.; Simon & Schuster; $4.50). Nature is easily kept in check by powered lawn mowers in suburban Pinecrest Manor, an hour from Broadway, but human nature creates a thick underbrush of sin and suffering. With the dull Cape Cods, the boring neighbors, the endless trivia of gossip, there is not much to turn to for excitement. Architect Larry Cole, who loves his wife and two youngsters after eight years of faultless married life, turns to Margaret Gault, a beautiful blonde whose husband spends a lot of time in an aircraft factory.

Larry and Margaret weave their deceitful way through the underbrush. A couple of the neighbors guess, but mostly the adulterers play in luck. Larry gives up a fine job to be near Margaret. But when it comes to planning the future, they would like a really full life; they want each other and their married mates as well. Author Evan Hunter suggests that life in suburbia is to blame, mutters vaguely that even success and a happy family are not enough for a man whose inner urges push beyond the humdrum life at the other end of the 5:37.

It took Author Hunter only 17 days as a substitute high school teacher in The Bronx to give him the makings of The Blackboard Jungle (TIME, Oct. 11, 1954), a lurid assault on delinquency in big-city classrooms. His second novel, Second Ending, led him into the sickly undergrowth of drug addiction. In his latest fictional safari, Explorer Hunter's credentials are a bit more solid; he lived in a Long Island suburb for four years. What he still lacks are the credentials of the novelist--shortcomings that not even the theme of adultery can handily overcome.

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