Harry and his precious trees. At the fatal moment, Stan is himself shot by his wife Elsie, who has learned the truth about nearly everything.

On cannot but have the impression that Rex Stout originally planned to go much further, but lost his nerve, perhaps originally intending Harry as an overt homosexual bent on seducing the latent Stan. In view of Mr. Stout's subsequent profitable career writing the less controversial Nero Wolfe murder mysteries it is perhaps as well for him he didn't stick his neck out too far in this book.

NOEL I. GARDE

CHRIS by Randy Salem, Beacon Books, 1959, 35c, 188 pp.

This is another one of the many original soft cover books being published today. Like the majority of its kind it has the usual characters: Chris, the lesbian heroine; Dizz, her roommate; and Carol, the other woman. In addition there is the usual "I can cure you of all this lesbian nonsense" man.

What makes Chris rise above the average is the happy fact that the situations don't follow the usual hackneyed pattern. The story is this. Chris, who is sketched as a masculine, intelligent, and attractive woman of about 30, has been living in unhappiness for 4 years with her beautiful roommate, Dizz. The unhappiness is, of course, mutual because gorgeous, sexy Dizz is frigid. To forget her failures with Dizz and to get the physical satisfaction that their relationship doesn't provide, Chris is in the habit of get-

ting drunk on Saturday nights and picking up a girl for a one night affair. In this fashion she meets Carol, who has had her eye on Chris anyway due to her admiration for Chris' work in marine biology. Due to mutual interests and attraction. this affair becomes serious. Jealous, Dizz allows herself to have an affair with a man. Dizz's reaction to the affair is one of the things that makes Chris a good novel. The usual pattern would be to have the girl either (a) realize she is actually heterosexual or (b) come in weeping and disheveled and describe the affair as a near rape. Not so here. Dizz is perfectly willing but gets no more satisfaction out of men than she can with women. As the story goes on, it is centered around both Chris' relationship to each of the women and her desire to prove to herself that she is not a has-been in part of her field of work, deep sea diving.

Although the book is better written than most of its kind, there are some faults. For instance, Chris is portrayed as a very fine person. In contrast with this image we have Chris' promiscuity which is both out of character and superfluous in the story. Chris' constant binges are also out of place in this book. At least 10% of the novel is devoted to descriptions of Chris nursing hangovers.

By way of comparison, the complex Dizz remains completely in character in every respect. Dizz is one of the reasons why this book is well above the run of the mill lesbian novel and should be read by all those interested in the subject. A. H.

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