HELL ON TRIAL

This is almost more of an echo than a follow-up on Dry Guillotine. After all, it has been said once. Once again, it is sensational, outre, and occasionally pretty nauseating. The first part deals with the year's parole, in Panama; then the return to the island at the end of the period. The balance of the book deals with the island, and cases there, -- torture, perversion, fraud, among convicts and officials. There is new material (for example, the glimpse of a leper island, devoid of medical care) but most of the material about the life in the jungle and in the prison seems a rehash. It is as lurid reading as the first book -- but the public seemed to like it. We frankly confess to having missed the boat on that book, for we did not recognize the extent of its popular appeal. And this one seems to us less good, a hasty patch-work job, which may ride to success on the heels of its predecessor.