End of Innocence

End of Innocence STOPOVER: TOKYO (313 pp.)--John P. Marquand--Llftle, Brown ($4.50).

MR. MOTO'S THREE ACES (447 pp.) --John P. Marquand--Liffle, Brown ($3.95).

B owing and scraping, the man in the purplish blue suit and the yellow shoes flashes a toothy smile gleaming with gold inlays. He hisses a greeting with all the ineffable politeness of an old-school Japanese. Who is he? Mr. Moto, of course, back in print after a 15-year absence owing to a slight unpleasantness between the U.S. and Japan. Author Marquand created his serial agent in the 19305 after a trip to the Orient, and it is strange to meet Moto again, now that Marquand is so much better known for his travels through New England and Suburbia.

As a thriller specialist, though still no match for Simenon or Erie Stanley Gardner, Marquand has suffered a marked loss of innocence since prewar days. In Mr. Moto's Three Aces the publishers have revived some old Moto yarns in which the mastermind outwits Chinese bandits, Russian gunmen, murderous extremists from his own country, and invariably becomes involved with a well-intentioned but hopelessly naive young American who blunders through the labyrinth of Asiatic intrigue. But Stopover: Tokyo is a brand-new Moto novel, and the change is significant: no longer need Mr. Moto patiently explain to the young American what the shooting is all about. Instead of an adventurous idealist, Hero Jack Rhyce is a trained CIA agent, as callous and professional as Moto himself. Even the villain is American--a big, handsome Communist so crafty and devious that he hoodwinks Moto into arresting Rhyce as a spy. There is an even more startling difference: in the prewar Moto stories, the clean-cut American usually won the lovable American girl. In the new book, Jack Rhyce wins only a Pyrrhic victory--the Communists are thwarted, but Ruth Bogart, Rhyce's true love and fellow secret agent, is killed. Clearly, Marquand's Americans have passed many a point of no return--in Tokyo as well as in Clyde, Mass.

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