THROUGH MIDNIGHT STREETS

Good -- which is strength and kindness -- and evil -- which is weakness and fear -- are personified by Owen Neil and Lloyd Kleinhardt whose lives have no point of contact until each must choose his own fate. Owen, a local Brooklyn boy, takes pleasure in his haphazard friends and cares little for his quick turnover in jobs and all this is hard for his Della, to whom he is a sickness and a rainbow. Lloyd, married to neurotic Marice, adoring his little daughter, descends from his respectable Riverdale life to Brooklyn's waterfront and periods of rumdum drinking -- which catches up with him and he catches the vicious imprisonment of human limpets. Owen lands, through sickness, at the same sinkhole of a hotel, knows his own power to escape the trap and offers an assist to Lloyd, which is accepted, then refused. For Lloyd there is degradation -- for Owen, his Delia and a job for which he is fitted. The commonplaces, the matter of factness and the bits of humor and characters surprise an unexpected interest, and give a chance for a tough, rough but contrarily innocent and cleanly moral -ed tale.