Books: Lay That Pistil Down, Babe

IN BED WE CRY—Ilka Chase—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Ilka Chase's first novel is the liveliest agitation of stamens and pistil since the last flowering of the night-blooming cereus. Like the heady perfumes of its heroine (a chrome-plated Manhattan cosmetician), In Bed We Cry derives its strength from a dash of civet. The plot is a triangle whose base is always broad, whose chief points are streamlined by agelessness.

Amorous, ambitious Devon Elliott has rocketed from a shelf of cosmetic stink pots in a cheap Greenwich Village rented room to the ownership of Devonshire House, a...