THE NORTHERN LIGHT, by A. J. Cronin (308 pp.; Little, Brown: $4), finds Novelist Cronin (The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom) crusading again and moralizing again, but the muscles of his indignation have sagged. His wide-open target is the English "popular" press, which runs to sex, sadism and trivia. Small-town Newspaper Publisher Henry Page seems hardly the man to lift his lance off the ground, much less to slay the dragon. He has been twice mayor of Hedleston, and is the great-great-grandson of the founder of the respectable Northern Light. Unfortunately, he...
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