Word: gainham
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...Night Falls on the City, Gainham...
NIGHT FALLS ON THE CITY by Sarah Gainham. 572 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston...
...physical brutality but moral decay. Night Falls on the City merely anticipates the probability. Some of the animal savagery is there, and the death and suffering, but what is even more shameful is the almost total collapse of human decency in a highly civilized-perhaps overcivilized-society. Author Gainham knows Austria well, and the Viennese victims, fence sitters, Nazi bullyboys, happy collaborators and German overlords are all convincing enough for documentary purposes. Almost predictably, her heroine, a famous actress, has a Jewish husband, and the terrifying things that happen when she hides him in a dummy room keep a thread...
...Austria's old escapist, professional charm before Nazi reality. It details the deportations, the mean spying for the Nazis by willing people of all classes, the fear of speaking openly, the people carted off for no known reason. Through the use of rather contrived plot coincidences, Author Gainham keeps her selected characters in view at all times, or at least until the SS and finally the Russians take care of them in their own way. Of an earlier book, Appointment in Vienna, a critic wrote that "Miss Gainham knows neither when nor how to stop." True enough...
...Night Falls on the City, Gainham...