Books: Pack Rat With Vision

ARIZONA — Clarence Budington Kelland—Harper ($2).

Gaunt-faced, peppery Clarence Budington Kelland is a leading professional in the slick-paper magazine school of fiction. Twice as ingenious as most of his rivals, he has two standard plots: 1) streamlined, wisecracking romances, in which a duffer outwises the wise guys, 2) yarns—mostly historical—in which all stops are pulled out to paean the American Way. Arizona, a Civil War yarn published last week, uses Plot 2.

One of Phoebe Titus' friends compared her to a pack rat, another to Joan of Arc. Neither would have been surprised had she sold the territory short when the Federal troops...