As calm and serene a garb as a man can wear is the standard gray flannel suit of commerce, a habiliment supposed to betoken solidity of character tastefully touched with quiet nonchalance. Calmness and serenity, however, frantically elude Tom Rath … [the title character of "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit"], and his inward solidity of character peeps forth, in quite pat fashion, only at the end of the narrative.

Rath killed seventeen men as a paratrooper in action in World War II. In Rome, he spent an unblessed honeymoon with Maria, a lovely young lady-of-the-streets whom he picked up in a bar….

Mr. Wilson succeeds in imparting the panicky quality of the lives of … [the] commuters in gray flannel…. The theme is that the dangers and worriments of New York-Connecticut life can be perhaps more difficult to overcome than the more dramatic perils of wartime combat.

This...