Books: Goodness Made Readable

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM—A. J.

Cronin—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Last week advance sales of The Keys of the Kingdom passed 250,000 copies, the biggest since For Whom the Bell Tolls. The first novel A. J. Cronin has written since The Citadel, had become a best-seller before it even reached the public. Advance buyers were the Book-of-the-Month Club (The Keys of the Kingdom is its August offer) and U.S. bookstores, which seldom make mistakes about what the public wants to read.

Archibald Joseph Cronin seldom makes such mistakes either. His first novel, Hatter's Castle, sold...