Books: Mixed Fiction, Jan. 3, 1955

TRIAL, by Don Mankiewicz (306 pp.; Harper; $3.50), is the $10,000 winner of the Harper Prize Novel Contest, but the ribbon it really earns is a piece of black crape. The book is a flaccid throwback to the I-never-had-a-chance school of social protest popular in the '30s. Author Mankiewicz, 32, nephew of movie Writer-Director-Producer Joe (The Barefoot Contessa) Mankiewicz, chooses as his hero-victim an 18-year-old boy of Mexican descent who lives in a Southern California town that draws its color line tight as a noose. Straying from "Mex Town," Angel Chavez makes his...

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