Books: Get the Angle Yet?

THE VISION OF RED O'SHEA (48 pp.)—Russell Janney—Coward-McCann ($1.50).

Russell Janney is an old and successful hand at reducing religious feeling to bathos ; his slushy novel, The Miracle of the Bells (TIME, Sept. 16, 1946), sold 750,000 copies. His doggerel Vision of Red O'Shea may not do as well, but it has a distinction of its own: not since Edgar Guest lit his Harbor Lights of Home and Robert Service thumped through Songs of a Sourdough has a versifier shown such loving absorption in platitude and meticulous attention to cliché.

Bartender Red O'Shea's vision comes after Gangster Scar shoots a dreamy rival...

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