Tough Fairytale

FULLY DRESSED AND IN HIS RIGHT MIND--Michael Fessier--Knopf ($2).

Of the school of U. S. writers which believes that toughness can cover a multitude of weakly sins, Michael Fessier is the latest exponent. Last week his first novel, Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind tried to show skeptical readers that a hard-boiled manner could make even a fairytale come true. The result was more like a parody than a parable--as if General Hugh Johnson had written his code version of one of the rayon-gossamer fables of Oscar Wilde. But readers who were stunned into shocked attention by The Postman Always Rings Twice (TIME, Feb. 19, 1934) may fall under the spell of Author Fessier's glittering eye.

Johnny Price lives in San Francisco and does nothing more tiring than clip the occasional coupon that enables him to pay room rent, drink and stand around on street corners. One day he meets up with a little old man, who makes a queerly indelible impression on him. Thereafter Johnny never knows when or where the little old man may appear; he begins to feel haunted. There is something terrible about the old man's eyes: he can stop a charging barkeep just by looking at him. Sadly troubled in mind, Johnny goes walking at night in Golden Gate Park. Out of the lake comes a beautiful girl, mother-naked and with the heart of a child. Her name, for some reason, is Trelia. She talks to Johnny in friendly fashion until he tries to touch her, when she swims away.

Johnny now has plenty to think about. The little old man haunts his days, Trelia his nights. As the old man's attitude grows more threatening, the girl becomes friendlier. But when Johnny sees that she cannot return his love, he says good-by to her. The old man, out of sheer fiendishness, kills an inoffensive Italian window-washer and an Irish bartender, then has Johnny arrested for murder. Because the old man swears he was an eyewitness and Johnny's alibi is weak, things look black for him. But with Johnny in deadly peril, Trelia's love suddenly awakens, matures overnight. With a woman's unerring instinct, she liquidates the little old man. The State's case collapses, Johnny is set free. Trelia comes to live with him. For a week he is as happy as a Buchmanite in Eden. Then Trelia relapses into feyness, goes back to her lake. But Johnny has his memories. . . .

Author Fessier piles Pelion on Ossa by declaring, at the end of his little old book: "The characters and situations in this work are wholly fictional and imaginative, and do not portray and are not intended to portray any actual persons or parties."

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