ACT OF MERCY

A small South American country has just undergone a revolution; its new dictator is iron-handed and its old president, Camara, was perhaps too soft for a country where life is cheap. On the run, sick, and spent, Camara is found on the grounds of Tom Jordan, an Englishman, the manager of a plantation, and Tom's ""act of mercy"", to cache him from his pursuants, is an instinctive voluntary commitment. Tom's gesture, understood only by his wife, Susan, and unexplainable later, jeopardizes their lives and that of the child they hope to have. And while most of the story is an exhausting ordeal of endurance and escape- across the frontier, it is bolstered by the basic moral principle involved. Mr. Clifford has made the harrowing most of it- and it offers some strenuous excitement along cleancut lines.