The Germans have a word for a writer who lets his hair (and standards) down. They call him "unbuttoned." Dr. A.J. Cronin must have been in very unbuttoned mood when he wrote "Beyond This Place" an old-fashioned melodrammer of the kind popular circa Ouida and Marie Corelli. That is not to say it isn't worth propping up in your hammock this summer, or that it won't be a best seller. The answer is yes in both cases. It's just that Dr. Cronin has elected this time to tell a suspenseful tale without regard for people or probabilities.

The book … opens in a British town on a deceptively peaceful note, with Mrs. Burgess, a gray-haired "widow," welcoming her clean-limbed son, Paul, from medical school. He needs his birth certificate for a vacation job, and she can't give it to him. Why? There is a mystery here and Paul...