5:30 TO MIDNIGHT

Right up at the top of the rentals, this first novel, smoothly handled, nicely tailored, Grand Hotel technique, for the cross sections of the advertising department of a New York store. There is Mrs. Dennings, brittle, self-centered, everybody's poison. There is the advertising manager, with a sick wife and mother, over-anxious, over-drinking. The young art director, taking a romantic ride; Helene Van Ness, fashion artist, with a sick, jobless husband to support. Tight job, which sounds melodramatic in recapitulation, but which is actually convincing and good reading, as the reel unrolls to concentrate fast action in twenty four hours. Reasonably safe for the not too conservative public library readers.