Books: Beneficent Suicide

ANNE MINION'S LIFE—Myron Brinig—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

Short-memoried newspaper readers still remember the gruesome case of John Warde, 26-year-old schizophrenic, who one morning last July climbed out on a 17th-story ledge of Manhattan's Hotel Gotham, eleven hours later jumped to a smashing death as 10,000 horrified watchers yelled: "There he goes!"

In that suicide Author Brinig (The Sisters, May Flavin) found the subject for Anne Minion's Life readymade. But he copied only part of the story—the physical details of how Anne Minton commits suicide. For his main story he leaves tormented Anne teetering on...