Bad Throw

GRENADINE ETCHING (270 pp.)--Robert C. Ruark--Doubleday ($2.75).

Grenadine Etching is a lampoon on the big-bosomed heroines of lending-library historical fiction--seemingly a sure-fire subject. The author, a Scripps-Howard columnist, must have thought so, because he didn't work hard enough at it.

Grenadine's father was believed to be "the bastard son of an English King who had despoiled a Scottish maid between the act of shooting grouse and angling for landlocked salmon." Grenadine, herself part Negro with Creole trimmings, grows up with a gorilla for a playmate; her first word, at seven months, is "man." She marries the governor of Havana, then becomes a slave trader, millionaire racehorse owner, inventor of the cigaret and, after the first 100 pages, dull to read about. Merely exaggerating the absurd is no sure way to hilarity; satire must make its own kind of sense and this makes little or none. Readers will admire Ruark's choice of target but deplore his aim.

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