Books: Paper Candidate

HORNSTEIN’S BOY (373 pp.)—Robert Traver—St. Marffn’s ($4.95).

Semi-saturated with sex, psychiatry and courtroom procedure, Robert Traver’s Anatomy of a Murder had a surefire formula for bestsellerdom. Hornstein’s Boy has not. A novel about a senatorial campaign, it is packed with nothing more exciting than paper dolls and paper arguments clipped from the magazine section of a Sunday newspaper.

Walt Dressier is the reluctant candidate. He is a smalltown lawyer, has ideals, and spouts them. His supporters, including Emil Hornstein, his campaign manager, listen with horrified dismay and, unlike the reader, bury their misgivings. The plot is hand-me-down—hostile columnist, incriminating photograph, Communist smear—and between, Traver rambles on with flatfooted passion about half a hundred worthy causes dear to his heart. So dear to his heart, in fact, that Traver (in real life John Voelker) resigned as a justice of the Michigan Supreme Court to write this book. He should have stayed on the bench.