Monticello, TV backdrop for events in The Edge of Night , is a typical town and , day by day, the town and its people are becoming better known. As in any middle-sized city, everybody knows everbody. In Monticello, there are the good people and the bad. There are the public-spirited and the self-seeking. The open, respectable happenings which make the town a charming place to live... and the boiling undercurrent of evil doings which stand revealed in the annals of the police department.

Any gossip in Monticello could tell you about the people of the town, but it would be better to ask Lieut. Mike Karr of the Police Department. Because Mike's a smart young man. He's studying for his bar examinations, you know. And he's got his eye on the D.A.'s office. Mike would know the true story of the town. Perhaps he wouldn't want to talk. But let's suppose for a minute that he would. He could tell about the Lanes, and that Spode family in town, and Grace O'Keefe, who's public stenographer at the Plaza Hotel, and her boyfriends. If he'd talk...

"Harry Lane?" Mike would say. "Harry is an enigma to most of this town. But I take a cagey view of Harry. He runs a business her, seems on the level. But, a while ago, a truck of his got hijacked. Supposed to be handling a regular shipment for Harry's business firm. But, when the police got hold of it, it turned out to be loaded with a shipment of 'hot' mink! It took us time and a lot of police work, but we got the guy responsible. Harry Lane's assistant-- man named Spode-- apparently tried to run through some stolen merchandise without letting Harry know what he was up to. We caught the guys who hijacked the truck-- one by the name of Bill Smith-- red-handed. And we found one of his accomplices, a no-good teenager named Walt Johnson. But we missed Smith's partner.

We know who he is, all right. Fellow named Larry White. But my partner in the force, Charlie, didn't close in quite fast enough on the day we made the arrests, and Larry got away. Of course, the two we caught eventually 'sang.' That's how Spode was finally implicated.

"I can understand how Spode might have gotten off the straight and narrow. He's got a nice wife, nice kid. But his wife Hester has been a semi-invalid for years. Spode adores her and the little girl, Bebe, but Hester's illness has cost him a lot-- more than Harry Lane pays him--for hospital expenses and the like. So I guess he was tempted to make a fast dishonest buck.

"But, you know, I still wonder how a smart operator like Harry Lane could have been hoodwinked by him. Harry's been so noble about the whole thing. Talk is that he's supporting Hester and the child while Spode serves out his sentence. Makes Harry look real good around the town. But I can't help but wonder. Harry's not usually that generous."

"Of course, I really shouldn't talk about Harry at all. He's the uncle of the girl I'm going to marry. And Sara wouldn't like me to open up on him, even if she dislikes and distrusts him herself."

"But, mainly, Sara's against Harry because of the situation with her Aunt Cora, Harry's wife. Cora's sort of a sad woman. And, the last few months, she's seemed to be hitting the bottle quite a lot, sort of dotty-- I understand-- because she's childless, lost her only baby, and Harry doesn't want to adopt. Lately, though, she's been much better. Sara got Cora interested in taking care of Hester Spode's little girl without letting Harry know about it. Seems to me, maybe Cora will come out of her shell, after all. And Cora loves my girl Sara. Why, for weeks she's been planning a big blow-out for Sara and me, to celebrate our engagement. Of course, the party would have come off long ago. . . except for the fact that I got mixed up in trying to round up Larry White-- one of the guys on the truck robbery-- and ended up with a bullet not too far away from my heart."

"Here's how it happened: My sidekick Charlie and I knew that Larry had a girl-- a singer, she is. Girl named Rose Latour, who works a night-club act here in town. So we figured that Larry'd eventually try to see her... and, when he did, we were there waiting for him. But he tried to shoot Charlie, and I sort of got in front of the bullet instead."

"Let me tell you, my girl Sara was all charged up about that gun fight. Wanted me to leave the Force right away. I've had a terrible time convincing her that this is my life and I can't give it up for anything.

"Of course, Sara's had her troubles. Her father George-- Harry Lane's brother--just up and disappeared from Monticello a number of years ago. Seems Harry had something to do with that, too. Sara's the oldest. Has a brother Jack, who's only eighteen now. And her mother naturally looked to Sara to sort of act as head of the family after George blew. So that's why Sara's been working all these years. She runs the florist shop in the Plaza Hotel. Brother Jack's been showing some resentment against Sara. Thinks, I guess, that he ought to wear the pants in the family. Also, for a while, he thought the sun rose and set on his Uncle Harry. And did that kid hate me! Thought I wanted to run Sara and the works, or something. But lately, since the shooting, he's almost beginning to like me-- almost. Guess he figures me for a hero..."

"Funny, how good things seem to come out of bad. I get shot. Jack likes me better. Sort of the same thing when old Spode got his sentence. Harry Lane takes over for the Spode family, money-wise. And then, when Hester gets worse and has to have an operation-- the bad thing again--everybody jumps in to take care of little Bebe. As I said, Cora Lane took some care of the kid without letting Harry know about it. And, Sara has been helping, too, without worrying about Bebe. But, best of all, Grace O'Keefe-- the Plaza's public steno-- ended up taking the youngster to live with her until Hester gets back. Grace is crazy about the kid. Having her around may end up with Grace ditching my friend Charlie (he's been sort of ducking the responsibility of marriage) and getting herself tied up to a widower named Paul Roberts who really wants a wife and already has two kids of his own."

"Never can tell how things will work out, can you?"

"There's Harry Lane and Cora, my girl Sara and her family, Grace O'Keefe and my friend Charlie and her new beau Paul, and old man Spode and his wife and child. Every single one of them's got problems. And, to look at them on Main Street, nobody would guess what's going on in their minds. No, in a town like Monticello, you can't tell what goes on by just what you read in the papers... Myself, I still wonder about Harry Lane... I just can't help wondering if he knows more than he's been telling."