Sermon Thriller

LUCKYPENNY-- Bruce Marshall -- Dutton ($2.50).

Religious and mystical novelists were once able to frighten sinners by giving terrifying descriptions of Hell. Nowadays, they make the world sound as bad as Hell once did. In Luckypenny, Bruce Marshall (Father Malachy's Miracle) demonstrates this development with a sermon thriller hinging on three themes : 1) that "rich men have been too selfish," which in turn makes the poor "unable to govern their greed," 2) that "mechanical invention has progressed out of all ratio to spiritual perfection," 3) that "men no longer believe in God."

Minor devil is James Arthur Currigan Luckypenny, middle-aged accountant in a big London munitions firm, bored by office routine, crazy for money and the world's fleshpots. Big devil is Munitions Tycoon Cornelius Lamsden, fiendish rhapsodizer on the worthlessness of mankind and the profit and beauty in killing with Lamsden munitions, who sends Luckypenny to Italy on a confidential mission, makes him his righthand man. By the time the double-crossing complications of the plot have lured Luckypenny to his end, Author Marshall's sermon has long since turned silly, a farce which means to be horrible but is only horribly funny.

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