CAPPTOS HILL

Andrew Tully's novel has a predictable Washington background and although he has shuffled the , you can read the cards and roughly spot the players. In fact she atmosphere in is like an all night poker session. There's the President, Warren P. man who uses bad grammar, calls his wife ""honey"", and reads detective stories after working an eight hour day. He's on the way out, and a lot of the action centers here around the primaries and pre-convention bid of the ""party of the people"", particularly Dan Williams, New York's Governor, and a Great White Father figure. Facing him is Douglas, a Southerner, who sees the need for a lot of adult education before the school segregation problem can be settled. There's also John Thurston, one of Williams' men, an operator, who refuses his wife the divorce she wants because it will ruin his career; Anne, his wife, who learns too late that the man she has fallen in love with is but gutless, an atomic physicist whose program is pinched by personal interests; Over and above the fact that politics seems to be a long way from public service, this is not highminded- but it's readable. Men chiefly.