Windless Cabins

A YOUNG man at a cheap tourist camp is carrying on an idyllic love affair with a neighboring gal. Her safety is threatened by a sinister visitor, and our hero strikes the villain and accidentally breaks his neck. He buries the victim, suffers tortures of fear and remorse, tells all to the heroine, and, just as we expect him to be discovered and electrocuted, the police decide he is entirely innocent, and he steps right into a happy ending. It is an academic novel, but one which, despite stilted dialogue, keeps the reader on tenterhooks. Death and destruction loom, but Mr. Van Doren couldn’t bear to write the indicated tragedy, and the ending is innocuous.