THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT

A compelling, tough-muscled novel about a fall guy and a Machiavelli of industry in a small-town New England setting. Nicholas Bray, as soon as he was able to realize the difference between what he wanted and what he had, had always hated the ""Hunkies"" -- those powerful, hard-working people who lived in the huddled shacks of ""Hunkyville"" and who always seemed to get in his way. There was Pacek in the yard of the Hargrove brass works for whose death he was indirectly responsible and whose job he took; Jancy whose promotion he fought, and the man who represented all his frustrated hatred, Emil Wojcik, studious genius, whom he had teased and tortured at school. When Frederick Hargrove, creator of the Connecticut town's big industry promoted Bray to Labor Relations Manager, it was easy to use Bray's one talent to break up a union and throw the liberal Slavic town officers out of office, by violence and dissension. The story ends as Bray, no longer of use to his boss, is cast off, and prowls the streets of Hunkytown searching for a victim. A tersely written, absorbing study of a stinker.