Catalogue of Killing

ALL NIGHT LONG--Erskine Caldwell --Duell, Sloan and Pearce ($2.50).

Sergei Korokov and his wife, Natasha, lived in a Russian village that was overrun by the Nazi Army. Sergei got orders to join the local force of Russian guerrillas. Escaping from his village, he killed a Nazi sentry, "felt the blade sink downward easily." To reach the guerrillas he had to shoot one German ("his body . . . rolled silently"), then-another ("his body crumpled").

Among the guerrillas Sergei met Fyodor, whose pregnant wife had been bayoneted to death by Nazis, his child daughter raped. Fyodor and Sergei were sent to dynamite a Nazi radio station. Fyodor dispatched a Nazi sentry with "a brief flash of his knife blade." The Germans were "perfect targets." Sergei's and Fyodor's bullets "tore into their bodies." The two Russians dashed home in a stolen Nazi truck.

Then Sergei and Fyodor were sent to a German-occupied town "to destroy . . . anything ... of any value to the enemy." On the outskirts of the town they met an old peasant woman who offered to help them. They were suddenly attacked by two Germans, Fyodor drove his knife into the body of one; Sergei twisted a short piece of rope around the other's throat.

After that Sergei went to sleep. He woke to find Fyodor had done in another Nazi: "The throat had been cut in a straight line above the Adam's apple." Sergei and Fyodor went out and saw a Nazi troop train; the Germans tried to jump out, "but their bodies, bored with steel-tipped bullets . . . fluttered to the ground like insects."

Then Sergei found that his wife Natasha was being kept nude in a Nazi soldier's brothel. He and Fyodor rushed the brothel, were stopped by a sentry. They "looped a wire around his neck." Sergei found Natasha with a German officer. He fired. In an instant "she came leaping over the body" into Sergei's arms. Soon they were safe in a snow hut built by Sergei. Fyodor's face was "placid." He was dead.

Author Caldwell's 19th book is a novel. Coming from the author of Tobacco Road, it is also the most prominent war casualty of recent U.S. writing.

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