Books: Electrified Romance

HIGH TENSION—William Wister Haines —Little, Brown ($2.50).

With his first novel, Slim (TIME, Aug. 20, 1934), a story of the linemen who string high-voltage transmission lines, Author Haines, himself a lineman, made a clean jump from transmission poles to best-seller ranks and Hollywood. Though Slim seemed a little too slick for its subject, it nevertheless subordinated romance to accurate descriptions of a dramatic trade and the lusty linemen who follow it. High Tension, first published in the Saturday Evening Post, is wired for more popular tastes, reverses the proportions of romance and realism.

Jig, a line gang boss on a railroad electrification job, tells the story in his own words—a wisecracking lineman’s lingo in which an angry character “arcs,” gets “hotter than a wet switch”; a nosey one gets “ideas his head ain’t insulated for.” Like the piano playing of the villain, the plot is as “complicated as a six-track interlocking,” contains as many trick effects as an electrical exposition. But when Author Haines writes straight description of wiring a low tunnel, his story delivers useful power.

Hero is Jig’s pal, Shelly Bayliss, a man’s man, though he has a queer habit of saving money, not drinking or chasing women. Heroine is Florabelle, beautiful, long-legged daughter of the ritzy, skinflint widow at whose house Jig and Shelly are boarders. Halfway through the book Author Haines begins feeding his melodrama all the voltage it will stand. At the climax —a big train wreck—Author Haines throws his switches in time to save his hero & heroine for a wedding, but not soon enough to save his story from the unmistakable frying smell that goes with electrocution.