Grace Metalious's characters usually develop along fairly predictable lines, and Tight White Collar offers few surprises, unlike those from No Adam in Eden (1963; see separate entry). Chris Pappas is virile and attracts Lisa, his wife, because of his animal sexuality. Nathaniel Cooper is gende and patient and long suffering when his wife Margery, a displaced Southerner, sacrifices her life to their mongoloid daughter. Anthony, a distant Cooper relative, returns to his ancestral house dying of some mysterious disease. He is an artist figure but one much jaded and warped by his experience outside of Cooper's Mills among the sophisticates of New York. As in Peyton Place (1956; see separate entry), there is a male homosexual in Tight White Collar, the local music teacher, who this time commits suicide rather than admit his sexual preferences and risk exposure to the ridicule of the town.

There is also the wise doctor...