THE HOURS AFTER MIDNIGHT:
. Masterful Suspense in tJ
THE HOURS AFTER MIDNIGHT. Ione morning, Charles and Helen

By Joseph Hayes. 182 pp. New
York: Randon House. $3.
AUTHOR JOSEPH HAYES has
made his reputation by de-
veloping masterful suspense with-
in the everyday environment of
the home,
He *id this first in "The Des-
perate Hours," a novel which he
translated successfully to the
stage. Now he has repeated his
formula with a short novel where-
in once again a placid-appearing
menage is transfixed by fear of
harm to one of its members.
Between two and - four - thirty

Elgin were subjected to the great-
est torment that can come to the
parents of a teen-aged girl. Their
daughter Julie, headstrong and a
little rebellious, had been kid-
napped by an irresponsible youth
and was being held for ransom.
It had all started as a sort of
joke. Julie, bored and a little.
peeved at her attentive and well-
mannered date, had deserted him
in the middle of the evening for
Nolan Stoddard, a surly misfit
who had always had a liking for
her.
When Nolan got Julie off to



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(Continued from Page 9)
Hart, Democratic nominee for the
United States Senate; Sen. John
B. Swainson, Democratic candi-
date for lieutenant governor; and
some high level advisers to Gov.
G. Mennen Williams who prefer
anonymity. The chairman of a
citizens committee backing the
convention is former U.S. Sen.
Prentiss M. Brown, a Democrat.
V THE OTHER side of the
fence, Go. Williams has op-
posed the convention because of
the method of selecting delegates.
But he finds himself agreeing
with some very conservative Re-
publicans, mostly the ones in the
state Senate which the more lib-
eral politicians around the state
refer to as the dinosaur wing of
the GOP.
E One critic said this group re-
acts like Pavlov's dog to sugges-
tion of any change. The Republi-
can senators fought a battle in
the party convention against the
resolution supporting the consti-
tutional convention.
The issue is given little chance
of passing on Tuesday. This is
due partly to the requirement that

ial Change?
a majority of votes cast for all
candidates for governor is needed
to call a convention, instead of
only a majority of votes cast on
the question itself.
Because many voters do not
know of the issue or care little
about it many will simply not vote
either way which in effect is the
same as voting no.

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he Home
himself, the idea for the practical
joke occurred to him. Julie's fa-
ther had usually treated him un-
kindly; he'd give the old fellow
a call and tell him he had Julie.
He'd make him squirm. The boy's
mind became inflamed, and theI
joke soon got out of hand.
11AYES' narrative, divided into
units by the hands on the
clock, is taut and economical.
The weaknesses and tensions of
the members of the Elgin family
are brought out quickly and-one
feels - almost too neatly. Each
figure has his moment of emer-
gence and clarification before fall-
ing back into the inexorable cur-
rent of the story's emotional flow.
The members of the Elgin fam-
ily are appealingly drawn as hu-
man, understandable, everyday
people.
However, they appear in the
story to have surrendered a good
part of their vitality to the elab-
orately developed "Suspense of the
Situation." Moreover, young, No-
lan, the story's antagonist, prob-
ably inspires more sympathy fromj
the reader than he should.fr
The final impression that "The
Hours After Midnight" gives is
that a group of interesting char-
acters, all well-motivated, have
been fatalistically subordinated by
the author to a less important but
dominant emotional plan.
-Donald A. Yates

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BUT ALSO of considerable sig-
nificance in the gloomy pros-
pects for the issue are the strange
divisions which have developed
backing it and opposing it
The result has been a campaign
in which nobody - except the
lonely League of Women Voters-
has said very much at all about
governmental improvement.
To be more explicit, the consti-
tutional convention issue has be-
come bogged down in Michigan
politics; the show is colorful, to
be sure, and the alliances involved
amusing, but they must leave the
voter wondering what the politi-
cians and special interest groups
are talking about when they ut-
ter platitudes about "good, effi-
cient, representative government
if our man is elected."


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