Bally hooey

THE GREEK--Tiffany Thayer--Boni ($2.50).*

Tiffany Thayer is audacious; he keeps telling you so, just in case you might forget it. But his strenuous manner is more a form of nervousness than a cloak for really big doings. Publisher Claude Kendall ballyhooed Author Thayer into a bestseller; now he has changed his publisher but not his key.

Principal audacities in The Greek: mak-ing himself (under his own name) the hero; showing a "seduction scene" by means of dialog. The story: Hero Thayer, vacationing with his wife in Europe, encounters a handsome young Greek, by name Paros. Mrs. Thayer flirts with Paros, falls in love with him. Meantime Thayer has discovered that Paros is a pretender to the Greek throne, the idolized head of a world-wide Society which is gradually getting Greece under its control. Thayer becomes Paros' henchman, surrenders his wife, sinks himself in the Society's work. Eventually, a mere devil for organization, he makes Paros Emperor of the U. S., himself takes the omnipotent job of Attorney General. Then he has a series of field-days working off old grudges, boosting what he regards as worthy objects. Prohibition is immediately repealed. Taking a tip from the noble experiment, Thayer revivifies the moribund book business by prohibiting it. The tale leaps from improbability to implausibleness, ends in a gory dime-novel welter. But it is readable; and some of the U. S. satire is telling, though often told.

*Published Nov. 27.

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