Smelling a rat in Comelot

* WHEN 18-year-old Peter Lawford -- billed in those days as ''the

British Jackie Coogan'' -- arrived in Los Angeles in the forties, it

wasn't Dorothy Parker's ''72 suburbs in search of a city'' he found, but

Shangri-la. With his stylish looks, impeccable manners, and clipped

English accent he quickly cut a swathe through Hollywood; even Princess

Margaret admitted she was ''crazy about him''. But it was marriage into

a quite different (if no less formidable) royal family that elevated him

to star status.

In the gilded Kennedy days of Joe and Rose, the secrets of the first

family became the Chinese whispers of the global village. With a cast

that boasted among others Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, not to

mention JFK in the starring role, Camelot was one soap opera that looked

set to run and run. But as James Spada's biography shows, the role of

President's brother-in-law would prove to be the toughest and most

sordid of Peter Lawford's career.

Marriage to Jack Kennedy's sister Pat in 1954 embroiled him in a

period of history that shows no signs of decline in its power to

fascinate. Hollywood Babylon met Washington Babylon, with Lawford the

perfect intermediary. Sinatra's Rat Pack gained a ''fifth musketeer'';

the President gained a pimp; and Lawford gained a drink and drugs

addiction. And, more memorably, a thumbprint in history as the man who

-- probably -- was the last person to speak to Marilyn Monroe.

From his controversial role in the cover-up of whatever it was that

happened to that platinum-blonde walking wound to his ''burned bridges

that littered the Hollywood landscape'', this is a compelling immorality

tale of why not to marry a millionairess that throws up more dirt than

you could dredge from the Chappaquiddick river. -- A. C.

Robin Lane Fox. THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION: Truth and Fiction in the

Bible (Penguin, #8.99).

* NEXT time a doorstep missionary interrupts your sinful life with a

chat about the literal truth of the Bible, be armed with a copy of this

book and spread the gospel: you can't trust the Gospels.

Scholarly but readable, Robin Lane Fox's study of the inconsistencies

littering the path from Genesis to Revelation provides a multitude of

historical facts and analysis to reach a conclusion stated by Ira

Gershwin more than half a century ago: things that you're liable to read

in the Bible/ they ain't necessarily so. Why, for example, are there two

versions of God's creation? How can the New Testament claim accuracy

when most of it was written decades after the crucifixion? And what use

are the prophets, when their works can be divided into self-fulfilling

predictions and successful warnings?

While Lane Fox proves that the Good Book is cooked, he does not

denigrate its greatness as literature or source of myth. If anything,

the ambiguities serve to reinforce its power for him, and for us. -- D.

H.

Andre Brink. A DRY WHITE SEASON (Minerva, #5.99).

* WHITE men walking on quicksand are Andre Brink's speciality, and as

a white liberal South African his credentials are flawless. There is

little solid moral ground in a nation where soft anger does little more

than act as scaffolding for the constant refurbishment a liberal

conscience requires, and hard action results in rapid reclassification

from pillar of the establishment to enemy of the state.

The latter process is explored here through the character of Ben Du

Toite, mild teacher, loving husband and father, and Afrikaaner. Ben

ignores the black heart of his country until his gardener Gordon's son

is arrested following an army massacre of schoolchildren and dies in

custody. Trying to have his son's body returned, Gordon is tortured and

allowed to commit ''suicide'' for his trouble. Ben assists his widow in

pursuing the case through the courts, and ends up on the death list of

the security services, abandoned by all but his son Johan.

It seems churlish to criticise so well-intentioned an exercise, but it

is worth noting Brink's inevitable flaw -- his very absorption, despite

himself, in the white experience. Andre Brink may write a great novel

some day, but the chances are it won't be about apartheid. -- C. D.

Marek Kohn. DOPE GIRLS: The Birth Of The British Drug Underground.

(Lawrence & Wishart, #7.99).

* TRY to discuss drugs without hysteria and the world will assume

you've rented an apartment in Flip City, and furthermore that you're not

averse to a spot of reefer madness yourself. Preconceptions have shifted

little since the scandal sheets drew attention to the hokey-cokey

shenanigans of the twenties, when journalist Chapman Pincher could ask:

''Is there a link between dope and jazz dancing -- apart from the fact

that coloured men who peddle reefers can meet susceptible teenagers at

the jazz clubs?''

How attitudes like these came to be carved in stone is the subject of

Marek Kohn's calm and clear-headed book, which continues in a Bright

Young Things context his long-running argument that it has always been

the association with certain social groups that determines a drug's

acceptability, along with its dangerous role in blurring sexual and

class distinctions. The Dope Girls of Kohn's title were the grade-B

aristocrats who in 1920s London shunned approbation in favour of

whatever good times were going; Kohn's book is a sympathetic,

enlightening, and vividly seedy account of their milieu. -- A. B.

Campbell Black and Jeffrey Cain. THE HOMING (Mandarin, #4.99).

* REMEMBER the Stepford Wives? Those uncannily beautiful dream girls

who fulfilled all the needs of regular working guys, and never once

asked for more housekeeping money? They were robots, and the message was

that the American dream could become a nightmare if its scientists were

allowed out of their labs.

Well now, in a town called Chilton, George Kenner is having strange

dreams about people he's never met in places he's never been to; and the

dreams keep coming true. He gets filmed everywhere he goes, the local

sheriff tails him for miles -- and when he speeds, the sheriff just

smiles.

All Kenner knows, when he comes to visit his daughter in sleepy, happy

Chilton, is that no-one wants him to leave -- unless that's what they

want him to think, just to be sure he will. The Homing is an unusual

blend of fifties-paranoia science fiction and modern horror; watch out

for giant pods in your vegetable patch. -- M. G.

William Hall. TITTER YE NOT: The Life Of Frankie Howerd (Grafton,

#5.99).

* I ONCE interviewed Frankie Howerd. He slugged whisky from a coffee

mug and refused to speak until I stood up and sang Blue Suede Shoes to

confirm his belief in the similarities of accent between Scots and

Americans. His get-up-and-go had got up and gone.

Which, to judge by William Hall's gee-golly-gosh biography, sounds

like just another normal day Chez Howerd. The original

crying-on-the-inside clown, Howerd endured a private life of

heartbreaking failure in return for his uniquely rumbustious comic gift.

Written like an extended magazine piece, with a parade of luvvies

doing their darling-Frankie bit, the book manages to be both coy (''very

few women enjoyed the privilege of being seen on Frankie's arm in

public'') and reverential at the same time. Perhaps the most interesting

angle on Howerd's career -- his adoption in the eighties by the

twentysomething comedy audience -- is bypassed completely. Titter ye

not; buy ye not; read ye not. -- A. B.

Amos Oz. TO KNOW A WOMAN (Vintage, #5.99).

* IF all drama arises out of conflict, it's not surprising that some

of the best contemporary fiction comes from Israel. Few authors dissect

Israel's problems more acutely than Amos Oz, the country's uncrowned

laureate.

His latest novel concerns Yoel Ravid, a secret service agent who,

after his wife Ivria's death in a bizarre accident, retires to Tel Aviv

with his mother, mother-in-law, and epileptic daughter Netta. In the

relative calm of suburbia, Yoel -- known to his colleagues as the Lie

Detector -- begins to re-examine his past, haunted by glimpses into a

world outside his own.

These distant, dreamlike echoes are scattered like clues throughout

his new life, clues to the puzzle of his estrangement from Ivria and

Netta and his allegiance to the security forces. In prose as terse as

Yoel's conversation, the rough edges of a nation's conscience are

explored; and although the novel is not explicitly about the

Israeli-Arab conflict, its shadow invades every corner of the

characters' lives. -- D. H.

Andrea Weiss. VAMPIRES AND VIOLETS: Lesbians In The Cinema (Jonathan

Cape, #12.99.

* IN the sex-drenched silent era, when starlets were Bible-black and

villains always blinked their eyes, there emerged a lesbian subtext

enhanced rather than camouflaged by the heavy layers of eye-shadow.

Theda Bara, Clara Bow, and the belles who followed possessed an

ambiguity that allowed for unisex appeal. Weiss's handsomely illustrated

survey of sapphic sirens traces the appearance of a distinct genre from

Louise Brooks through the camp vamps of the thirties -- Dietrich, Garbo,

and Hepburn forever cross-dressing and lording it over weaker men -- to

the lusty, busty bloodsuckers of Hammer horror shows like Twins of Evil.

The Hays Code that bowdlerised statements like Lillian Hellman's The

Children's Hour couldn't suppress the velvet undercurrent, but while

today's lesbian cinema may be a liberation for its constituency, it's

much less fun than the violet visions and mascara boom-de-ay of those

early baritone babes. -- D. H.

BREAKING ICE: An Anthology Of Contemporary African-American Fiction

(Vintage, #6.99)

* IN popular music, more black artists than ever before are now

readily absorbed into the mainstream. With all eyes on the street, the

crossover from obscurity to MTV is often swift and potent. Yet in the

higher echelons of fiction, new and unknown black writers have been

overlooked and marginalised.

This collection of more than 30 short stories from writers of

African-American descent is the first of its kind for more than a

decade. It includes work by a few established names like Alice Walker

and William Denby, but acts mainly as a platform for new and

lesser-known talents.

Sharing a strong sense of identity, the writers' widely different

views of life in present-day America are universally enthralling. Hip,

funny, sad, idealistic, or tragic, the subject matter veers from the

love of a college boy for one of his male classmates to a mother trying

to deal with her emotions when her son is released from prison. The

voices here are unapologetic, personal, and vibrant. -- B. C.

*Fiction

*Non-fiction