Books: New Fiction

TOWER IN THE WEST, by Frank Norris (362 pp.; Harper: $3.95), proves once again that imitating J. P. Marquand is tricky business. The danger: instead of capturing the hypnotic quality of Marquand's even-tempered prose, the writer may find he has only reproduced Marquand's low emotional pulsebeat. In this 1957 Harper Prize Novel, Author Frank Norris* does not quite get out of this Marquandary. His hero, George Hanes, is cut to the Marquand measure; he is an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton '01), a professional man (architect), unhappily married, and an ineffectual struggler against the leg...