Dartmouth Authors

Frank Orenstein '4O, THE MAN IN THEGREY FLANNEL SHROUD, St. Martin'sPress, 208 pp., $13.85. This sequel, or successor, to Orenstein's previous Madison Avenue Mystery, continues to delight with the wry cynicism of its hero - an ad agency executive who would rather be growing apples upstate, but keeps getting embroiled in murders. The murder here is by computer, the culprit relatively easy to deduce, but the motive obscure. The pleasures of the volume revolve around its assemblage of characters and the thoroughly engaging observations and actions of it narrator, who paints a picture of Madison Avenue that all but the most committed and humorless executive would find revealing and entertaining.

Robert Montgomery '68, RABBIT EARS,New American Library, 1985, 159 pp., $2.50. Billed as a "young adults' sports novel," Rabbit Ears takes one back to the better stories one remembers fondly from Boys' Life. Likeable characters with fairly universal teenage problems are assembled around a central sports theme, easily and breezily told. The game is baseball, the problems are girls, death, and triumphing over paralyzing sensitivity - the "rabbit ears" of the title. Montgomery has a good ear for the way high school students kid each other (or the way high school readers like to think they kid each other, which amounts to the same thing), but whether his slang is current or hopelessly outdated, it is for no one over the age of 18 to judge.