Shake This Town. By Robert V. Williams. (Hart-Davis, 18s.) Good,
long documentary read about a dingy, run-down textile town— a sort of corrupt New Jersey Jarrow of the 1950s —in which a thick-eared ltalo-American ex-
gaolbird ex-pug tries to find out who bumped off his mild-mannered market-gardening old dad, and why. Bit long for its plot, like Trollope, only tougher. Shorter, more machine-made, but lightly
constructed. pretty plausible and quite tense are Operation Terror, by The Gordons (Macdonald, 12s. 6d.), which is about a carefully planned bank-robbery, with personable girl cashier co- operating under threat, and The Time of Terror, by Lionel White (Boardman, 12s. 6d.), with an out-of-work white-collar man harassed by debt' into an incompetent and half-hearted kidnapping, a more callous operator getting into the act, and a final explosion into violence. Short, crisp, exciting, and even rather moving.
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