RAIN BEFORE SEVEN

Good going, in romance-cum-adventure, with a 1940 spy set-up, Fifth Column, red-baiting et al. The scene is a New England community in the neighborhood of a Machine Tool Shop, where vital war material is being produced. A dred-in-New-England-wool conservative bucks up against his prejudices, inherited and acquired, and jumps to conclusions involving an old friend and neighbor who is tarred with the liberal brush. Meantime, actual machinations are taking place under his aristocratic nose, and it takes the shattering of one romance and the creation of another to bring him around. There's an undercurrent of warning -- take heed tons all lest we fall into similar pits of intolerance. Good reading, good writing.