Downfall and Upfall

I COME AS A THIEF

by LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS 231 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $6.95.

At his very best, as in The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss can not only enforce sobriety and respect among his readers; he manages to convey some sense of the strengths and well-harnessed passions that underlie the propriety of his WASP characters. There has always been a strain of unintended comedy in this kind of mannerly fiction, however. The habits and rituals of Auchincloss's well-bred people--moneyed Protestants in the backwaters of the Eastern Establishment --are in themselves no more ridiculous than those of other groups. But the author is so solemn about them that when his control lapses, reader mutiny results, mostly in the form of attacks of the snickers.

During this present novel, even affectionate readers will have a hard time remembering what it is that often makes Auchincloss worth bothering about. The story, written at the level of what used to be called women's magazine fiction, concerns the downfall and upfall of Tony Lowder, a decent, attractive and rather priggish young lawyer with political ambitions. To help a feckless law partner who is in financial trouble, and because there seems no reason not to, Lowder accepts a bribe from a Mafia-connected moneyman whose activities are under investigation. The novel follows the muscular workings of the hero's conscience, which, after much interior melodrama, sees him through.

There is no logical point at which to begin an analysis of what went wrong with I Come as a Thief. The reader is left with the vivid impression that Auchincloss forgot why he called his characters together in the first place, and was too embarrassed to ask them to disband. .JohnSkow

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