Inherit the Night
by. Farrar, Straus, $3.00.
A stranger, who might be Humphrey Bogart (he is thin-lipped, close-mouthed) or Adolph Hitler (he carries in his pocket a newspaper headline that reads “Enemy Leader Dies in Besieged City”), makes his way by bribe and battery to San Cobar. an Andean hamlet so loftily inaccessible that it is believed by many to be more myth than matter. By this advent. Mr. Christie attempts to show the effect on an innocent community of a corrupt personality. The intimated conflict is never satisfactorily engaged — perhaps because Mr. Christie’s characters are unequal to their symbolic roles. The evil of Kurt Worden is essentially rootless and footless. The goodness of the villagers proceeds from ignorance of evil rather than from rejection of it. Silone had his Fontamarians grow up, and maybe Mr. Christie ought to think about that.