Forgotten Books: THE GREATEST CRIME -- Sloan Wilson

In the 1950s, Sloan Wilson wrote a couple of books that everybody knew about. Probably most people remember The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which became so famous both as a book and as a movie that its title became a catch-phrase. Even people who hadn't read the novel or seen the movie knew it and had an idea of what it meant.

Not as many people know that Wilson also wrote A Summer Place. It was also hugely successful as both a book and a movie (having teen hearthrobs Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue probably helped) and made Sloan Wilson indirectly responsible for one of my least favorite #1 hits, the execrable "Theme from a Summer Place," which is even now, after 50 years, inescapable on oldies stations.

After those two big hits, Wilson continued to write for many years without attaining nearly the success his earlier books had. He tried The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II in 1984, but it didn't help. In his last years (he died in 2003), he was writing biographies and yachting articles.

A couple of Wilson's later books were thrillers, sort of, and The Greatest Crime is about a seaman named Andy Anderson. He's good with boats, and he's worked for the Clayton family a number of times over the years. Now the younger Clayton, Tad, wants to get Andy involved in a really big drug deal. Just do one and retire for life. A billion-dollar deal. Eventually Tad's father gets into the act because he's the only one with the money and contacts to pull off a deal like that. Andy struggles to find his moral center, and this being a Sloan Wilson novel, there's no doubt that he will.

Wilson knows the sea and boats, and the details of the drug deal are obviously thoroughly researched. The action isn't up to the standard of a current thriller, but this isn't about action. It's about character. There's even a clearly stated moral at the end. A good, solid book, the kind they don't write anymore because there's no market for books like this. Kind of sad in a way.