Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime

Dunning's obvious love for radio as a medium of artistic expression and his knowledge of its history go a long way toward redeeming an occasionally heavy-handed narrative that takes a turn for melodrama several times too often. It's May 1942, and Jack Delaney--32, a published but impoverished Southern novelist and short story writer--is working in the stables of a racetrack in Oakland, Calif. A fight with some soldiers who mistake Jack's draft deferment (he is deaf in one ear) for cowardice puts him in a work camp until his traveling companion, an out-of-work radio actor named Kendall, helps him escape. But Kendall is soon killed, sending Jack on a complicated chase cross-country, seeking the girl he left behind and her father, who seems to have stirred things up by mailing Jack some top-secret material. Gaines manages to bring to life a large cast of eccentric radio types, Nazi spies and IRA sympathizers: all that's missing is real sound effects to make this an elongated version of ""The Shadow"" or ""Secret Agent X-9."" Simultaneous release with the Scribner hardcover. (Jan.)