THE EVENING OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN

This novel, tracing some twenty odd years, takes the author out of the mystery-only class, puts her into straight fiction which develops its end from a quite unrelated, distant, start. The location is Traders City (Chicago?); the beginnings are the mid-thirties; those involved at that time have little connection with the end denouement. For who would know that Jonathan Hogan (suspect for his beliefs at Midwestern University) would have a son, Marcus, who, in turn, would marry convent-raised Martha? And who could find the thread that linked Martha's parents, her mother (and her lover and the scandal that politics dynamited), the newspaper owned by Sylvia Fields' family, and the chance-met European surgeon Nathan Reiss -- to the years' turning that brought about the suicide of Martha's father, the death of her husband and of Sylvia's? Who would ever imagine that Martha and Marcus' son would be accused of murdering Nathan Reiss? Building from an uncomplicated start this works its way through the changing social, political, economic and historical impact on an involuntarily connected group, and argues the effect of an opportunist on others' lives. Solid workmanship, a grasp of international involvements and a feeling for personal development, keep this sturdy in its interest.