SON'S TEETH

The sage of Lanny Budd goes on — this time compassing the years 1929-34, with the rise of the Nazi monster as the central theme. Lanny and his idealism come into sharp conflict with the worldly economic royalist viewpoint of his millionaire wife. Irma, who resents his championship of the downtrodden, particularly of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The main action involves successive trips into Germany in the endeavor to trios the family of his half-sister from concentration camps and worse. There is nothing particularly new in content or manner. The book is meticulously detailed as to the march of time; headline figures cross the pages; Zaharoff and the German rulers come into the picture repeatedly; and a strange twist, which seems to have comparatively little to do with the development of the story is introduced through the character of a spiritualist medium. Crowded canvas, with many of the characters from the earlier books — but little actual rounding out of situation or personalities. Lanny, since the first book, has remained for me a puppet, moved through his paces. And Sinclair seems to be incurably class and money conscious.