Tight White Collar provides another examination small town life; this time the microcosm is a small mill town in New England. Once again the book was designed to get underneath the tight white collar of respectability behind which people hide and which can choke them until they lose their humanity.

Metalious was always concerned with exposing hypocrisy; this time, however, her interests were less sexual and more economic and social.

As with all small, single-industry towns, Cooper's Mills is dominated by the few families who own the mills. The social hierarchy seems more rigid than in Peyton Place and the town more unforgiving. The focus is also much more on her male characters than in Peyton Place, examining their drinking habits, their jobs, their sexual preferences, and their relationships to their mothers. The novel, although better than Return to Peyton Place, is thinner and less comprehensive...