Wide, Mobile Mouth

THE WEAK AND THE STRONG (209 pp.) --Gerald Kersh--Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

Gerald Kersh, whose promise was considerable, seems determined to become no more than an English-accented historian of the Humphrey Bogart era. The bouncing vitality, rugged prose and well-turned dialogue of such books as Faces in a Dusty Picture and Sergeant Nelson of the Guard have won him a small host of admirers.

But in his new novel, Kersh's characters seem to rattle down on the reader like a hail of dime-store jewelry. They include: Gangster "Big" Brogan ("he wears . . . a ruby not much smaller than a three-volt electric light bulb"), his moll, Ritz ("her breasts look as if they would ring like wineglasses"), gargantuan Russian Prince Golubchik ("women shudder deliciously"), Cinemagnate Sam Schatz ("women in the big money . . . call [him] a swine"), Madame Toulouse ("her stomach makes a warbling sound . . . her eyes shine with pure love"), Flutist Ochs ("his mouth [is] like a blown-out hole in a soft lead pipe"), Dancer Flamingo ("she has known . . . moments that have transcended space and time"), a tourist-guide ("his wide, mobile mouth smiles perpetually").

Author Kersh collects all these characters, and a good many more, on a lush tropical island which he says resembles "a pimple on the head of a drowned giant." An earth tremor traps them (forever, they think) in a cave--where Author Kersh leaves them to fight it out, each according to his own sweet disposition. The next 164 pages fairly palpitate with fisticuffs, groans, skullduggery, warbling, breasts ringing like, wineglasses, moments that transcend space and time.

Author Kersh--who worked as baker, bouncer, wrestler and Coldstream Guardsman before he became known as a novelist--is at his lively best when he is wallowing in gore, at his worst when he tries to raise the level of his thriller by expatiating on Man, Life and The Eternal. Those who believe--as do Publishers Simon & Schuster--that Author Kersh is "one of England's foremost young writers," or even those who considered him a man after Hemingway's heart, will find their faith severely shaken by The Weak and the Strong.

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