Books: Off the Target

FACE OF A HERO (312 pp.)—Louis Falstein—Harcourf, Brace ($3).

Face of a Hero is called by its publishers "one of the most powerful and truthful novels to come out of World War II." It is powerful only if a mixture of bitterness and resentment can be called power, and it is not so much a novel as one grouser's-eye view of the war in the air. The author is First Novelist Louis Falstein, a gunner who completed his 50 missions, won the Air Medal and added a couple of clusters to it. His hero and narrator is Gunner Ben Isaacs, a congenital...