PHYLLIS

unlike Sylvia (1960) is an outright suspense story, and follows the events and hypothetical danger which attend the disappearance of a Professor Horton, from a New York university where he had taught physics. Thomas Clancy, a cop, with a grounding in the subject, is sent to Knlckerbocker University ostensibly to teach, actually to get a line on Horton who, with an also missing Russian scientist, has claimed to have two atomic bombs which they will set off in New York and Moscow- simultaneously and at a set providing a detent, on the atomic weapon race is not reached. With Phyllis' help (she teaches at Knickerbocker and had known Horton) and the collaboration of Grischay of the Soviet Embassy, he follows a thin trail. There are high-priced inducements: (he is offered a half a million for the bomb and threats, Phyllis' mother is brutally killed); but Clancy stays with the case to its savage finale which is something of a bulldozer and takes the life of Grischov among others, surprisingly a great guy. A melodrama which may, in the print of retrospect, seem unlikely, but it achieves a maximal momentum. A double for the mystery market.