WHEN the mysterious hand pulled Mr. Hector Owen (who was waiting there pretty hopelessly for his wife) through the rainswept, dismal doorway on a depressing New York street, it pulled him at the same time into a new life-a life where inhibitions vanished and dreams came true. For this is the odyssey of Mr. Owen, the average man, who never had had his share of fun, whom life bullied and harried, who wanted nothing so much as to go away somewhere and hide. Instead, through the miraculous doorway, he was t o meet love and adventure, to fall in with Miss Honor Knightly, that paragon of her sex; with Mr. Monk, who had written a book, and with Minnie the stuffed whale, who was simply inert; with the three outrageous shopkeepers, Messrs. Larkin, Britt-Britt an d Dinner; with hordes of women who pursued him clamorously; with triple martinis served in a stein; with, in short, the kind of a life he had always wanted to live. As tender and wise as he is funny, Thorne Smith has made this book for and about all of u s. It will take high place in the gay, ribald gallery with TURNABOUT, THE BISHOP'S, J JAEGERS, THE STRAY LAMB and his other masterpieces of laughter and satire.