Pirate-Patriot

BLACK IVORY--Polan Banks-- Harper ($2). Once upon a time there was a pirate who marauded the Gulf of Mexico. Black ivory (slaves) was his chief booty. His men were cutthroats to the last gurgle. But his diablerie was so debonair, his ruthlessness so discriminating, that the Latin citizenry of New Orleans around 1800 could not take offense when he came boldly ashore to do business with them and dance with their daughters to the wailing guitar. In 1812 the British tried to buy him up to betray his favorite port. He pondered. He was Jean Lafitte, outlaw. The northern barbarians who ran the country of which New Orleans was but an exotic new part, had set a price on his head. Nevertheless, honor told him that his hosts' friends were his friends. He fought under Old Hickory.

Now all this is true and out of no story book. But it goes into a story book most readily. The young gentleman who has romanticized it was born in another tradition of colorful early America (a distant uncle was minister of finance to Ferdinand and Isabella). His literary abilities more than deserve the graceful prefatory gesture that is accorded them by Edward Lucas White.

Dull, Careless

RELATIONS--Sir Harry Johnston --Harper ($2). People who were enthusiastic about The Gay Dombeys and Mrs. Warren's Daughter are going to be faintly disappointed by Sir Harry's new opus. He has been careless and a mite dull. His people are a rich Australian who marries the Governor's daughter--and their many relations. It is the kind of book in which plot matters not a whit and conversation, behavior and obiter dicta are everything. The first is stilted, the second unreal--having breakfasted, these upper-class Brit-ishers "wiped their lips and put down their napkins and blew their noses"--and the third consists largely in sudden aimless excursions into geology, botany, anthropology, astronomy.

"Elizabethan"

THREE KINGDOMS--Storm Jameson--Knopf ($2.50). One of the first things that will strike you about Miss Jameson is that she belongs to that widening circle of young Britishers who have fallen into the habit of calling a spade a double-blank, worm-turning, corrupt appendage of his Satanic majesty. Some call it the return of Elizabethan zest, all this hardriding, goddamning and firing of bon-mots that whiz like shells by night but look like duds in the morning. Caroline, the female cad of this chronicle, is said to have served Love, "the capricious boy who makes bedfellows of us all." Another young lady is directly addressed by a term seldom heard outside the dogshow. If you are of a cheerful cast, however, you cannot but recognize much mother wit among the refuse, a native tang in the bawdy breeze. The story: the leggy daughter of a long line of muddling-through country gentlemen embraces higher education, marries an elfish gentleman of traditions and talents, sees him off to the wars, straddles those jealous nags wifehood, motherhood and career, and comes a cropper.

Gigolo

COVER CHARGE--Cornell Woolrich--Boni, Liveright ($2). This book is as tempting, dizzying and profitable as six cocktails, a witty, well-dressed . at slightly disheveled dinner in a divorcee's apartment, a "Ritzy"* leg-show, flasks in the motor, a select and delirious nightclub, depravity and White Rock water, rhapsodic blues, quarrelsome Charlestoning, jazz illusions, trombonic passions, grim and inane dawn, studs popped, lipsticks broken, values leaking, courage gone. It is the somewhat vulgar but entirely contemporary story of a Gotham gigolo and his partners: a Tommy Tucker who, bored on his native Park Ave., tangoed for his supper on a number of Great White Ways including Harlem and Buenos Aires. In the end, he paid that inexorable, inscrutable fee, the cover charge--paid with both legs. Author Woolrich, impressionable and impressionistic, lately attended Columbia University.

*Demi-mondaine slang connoting "elegant, costly, exclusive, haughty" ; derived from the name of the Ritz-Carlton hotels (Manhattan, Philadelphia, London, Paris). A "Rijzy" retort, for example, was that accorded an acquaintance of Countess Cathcart who inquired last week by telephone of the Ritz in Manhattan: "Is the Countess there?" The Ritz telephone operator: "Which countess?"