Soup Opera

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES (244 pp ) James Aswell--Rinehart ($3).

A rung or so below the problem novel on fiction's ladder stands the predicament novel. This type of fiction might also be called soup opera, since the hero or heroine usually gets in the soup in the first chapter and doesn't get out till the last. Soup-opera books have a further important characteristic: after modest-sized editions in hard covers, they go quickly into huge editions in paperback--and become the reading of millions. The Birds and the Bees by James Aswell is a typical sample of the species.

Novelist Aswell's heroine, Rowdy, is rich, sweet, 17, and belongs to the want-to-be-lost generation. She is engaged to a handsome home-town boy (Rivermark, La.) who sells insurance and is as safe and sane as the Fourth of July without firecrackers. When he introduces her to a poetry-quoting New Orleans gambler, Randy Blane, Rowdy feels the "dark downbeat witchery" of the man melting her engagement ring.

That very night, Gambler Randy shows up outside Rowdy's window with a bullet wound in his upper arm and a plea of "Hide me" on his lips. A Congressman's son has been killed in a shooting brawl, and Randy is sure he will be tagged with the rap. Rowdy not only hides him, she takes charge of his getaway by car and speedboat.

As the plot thickens, Randy sickens. When his fever hits 104DEG, the runaways hole up with a heroin-peddling doctor who shoots Randy full of antibiotics. Randy recovers, but, at 39, he is sure that all of life's dice are loaded; he has little faith in second chances, especially sexy ones. He advises Rowdy to go home to her insurance salesman, which indeed she does, but not before she sees Randy cut down in a hail of bullets.

In spots, Author Aswell catches the seamy side of his native Delta country pretty well. But most of the time, The Birds and the Bees reads like a book that knows its destiny all too well--not the library shelf but the drugstore rack.

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