Books: Success & Salvation

After Suspense and Sex, the S ingredient that most often brings bestsellerdom is Salvation. That lofty subject, sprinkled with touches of the first two, is the theme of two briskly selling women's novels. They have nothing more than that to recommend them.

TELL NO MAN, by 73-year-old Adela Rogers St. Johns (444 pages; Doubleday; $5.95), is a soap opera of flapping metaphors and dangling syntax that asks: Can an "upstanding, up-and-coming, go-getting, moneymaking, sports-minded, about-town-business-and-Yale man" chuck his $50,000-a-year job and find happiness as a minister? The gospel according to St. Johns is a turgid yes, provided that he preaches a theology based on the teachings of Rebecca West, Billy Graham, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, J. D. Salinger, Jakob Bohme and Damon Runyon. Tell No Man is No. 5 on the bestseller list.

NO ONE HEARS BUT HIM, by Taylor Caldwell (298 pages; Doubleday; $4.95), is Old Pro Caldwell's 24th book—not exactly a novel or a sequel but more like an addendum to her 1960 bestseller The Listener. Once again readers are introduced to the strange John Godfrey sanctuary, where the Man who Listens soothes the frightened and despairing of the world. This time the sad samples who pour out their case histories include a minister who has lost his faith, a 33-year-old playboy who never grew up, a rich man who has nothing except money, and a Negro agonizing over a life lived as a symbol. The book is not yet among the top ten bestsellers, but Taylor Caldwell's constant readers should put it there.