Odd Man In

PEACEABLE LANE (345 pp.) --Keith Wheeler--Simon & Schuster ($4.50).

Matt Jones is a run-of-the-Miltown adman who lives in a suburb of New York's Westchester County, where the only certainties are debt and taxes. Peaceable Lane is a newly planted colony of middle-class status creepers whose houses cost $30,000. "You can get some pretty odd ones at those prices," says a big-rich snob from nearby Grassy Tor, but Peaceable Lane's eleven families, ranging from doctors and lawyers to a union vice president and a radio commentator, are not notably odd. Matt and his neighbors are a standoffish, power-mower elite who rarely pool anything beyond the cars with which the wives chauffeur the kids to school each day. But one lazy Sunday afternoon, between the Bloody Marys and the charcoal-broiled steaks, sudden fear glues Peaceable Lane together. An odd man wants in; a Negro is dickering for the house right next door to Matt Jones.

Grey Market. What follows is a kind of social-consciousness thriller. Author Keith Wheeler, a LIFE associate editor, feelingly probes the grey market in interracial ethics. Like most topical problem novels, Peaceable Lane, a December Book-of-the-Month choice, is on somewhat distant terms with literature, and Breathlessly intimate with today's headlines. Written with manifest good will, the novel unfortunately discriminates against character development in favor of cliches and plot-conditioned responses. But if the people are not quite real, their dilemma is.

Rallying to the cry that property values will plummet, Matt heads a neighborhood group to buy the house and keep it out of the Negro's hands. Success proves bitter. Far from being a faceless figure of dread, the would-be purchaser turns out to be Lamar Winter, a gifted commercial artist and Matt's business teammate and friend for seven years. In a tormented about-face, and with the aid of an equally conscience-stricken Jewish lawyer confederate, Matt secretly sells Lamar the house.

Lamar Winter is a kind of Uncle Tom in reverse. He wears the chips on his shoulders like epaulets, is always combat-ready for the slurs, or worse, of what he regards as the inevitable war between the races. Incidents multiply. The community swimming pool is drained after Lamar's nine-year-old son takes a dip. His wife is bloodied by a bullyboy's stone. The most vicious pressure of all is applied against Lamar by a member of his own race, a Mr. Barton, who acts as a "blockbuster," attempting to spread panic among the whites in order to purchase their homes at distress prices and resell to Negroes at a fat profit. Before Peaceable Lane lives up to its ironic name, Matt, Lamar and the others lose more than property values, but gain something like a good conscience.

Cain & Abel. Author Wheeler paces his novel skillfully by uncorking surprises in the relation of white with white and black with black. His analysis of race prejudice itself packs no surprises and probes no great psychological depth, since he is content to argue that hate, like love, is blind. Even near novel's end, Matt and Lamar are scarcely better brothers under the skin than Cain and Abel. They agree only that their children may learn to live together without racial conflict and deserve the chance to try.

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