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A SHADE OF DIFFERENCE (603 pp.)--Allen Drury--Doubleday ($6.95).

Allen Drury did two things when he began to make his fortune with Advise and Consent, a fascinating first novel about a fight in the U.S. Senate to reject the President's nominee for Secretary of State. First, he quit the New York Times. Second, knowing a mother lode when he struck one, he began a sequel to the book that has sold 2,350,000 copies in hard covers and paperbacks and been made into a play and a movie. In bulk, A Shade of Difference nearly matches Advise and Consent: 603 pp. v. 616. But in pace and power, it falls far short of Advise.

Terrible Terry. Advise and Consent left the nation dangling in perilous circumstance. The Russians had just landed on the moon and ominously summoned the U.S. to Geneva for a conference. The death of the President had thrust command upon Harley M. Hudson, the harmless nincompoop of a Vice President.

As A Shade of Difference begins, the demands of the presidency have put some steel into Harley's spine, and the U.S. has put some men on the moon. When the Russians give the U.S. a choice be tween surrendering or being annihilated by an attack from the moon, Harley stands up to the Reds. The Russians are cowed, the West is saved, and Drury, having made a dutiful pass at bridging his two books, turns to a brand-new theme.

The man who cranks the new plot into action is His Royal Highness Terence ("Terrible Terry'') Wolowo Ajkaje, a 6-ft.-y-in. African native who is the ambitious leader of the British protectorate of Gorotoland. To make a name for himself, Terrible Terry pops up in South Carolina on the tense first day of school integration. Dressed in his tribal robes, he picks up a little Negro girl and touches off a riot by carrying her up the school steps through a blockading mob of screaming white harridans.

Like Errant Satellites. With that, a wily Panamanian introduces a resolution in the U.N. condemning the U.S. for discrimination and ordering a U.N. investigation of U.S. racial practices. To head off this vote, the Administration per suades a young Negro Congressman named Cullee Hamilton to propose a joint resolution on Capitol Hill that would apologize to Terrible Terry, grant Goroto $10 million in hush money, and to speed up integration. Subplots sub-subplots whirl around these two resolutions like so many errant satellites; the chapters stretch on and on. In the end, Congress adopts Hamilton's proposal, and the U.N., appeased by the act. turns the Panamanian's resolution.

The strength of Advise and Consent was Drury's narrative skill, which played off character against character in sharply focused scenes, and the sharp insider's insight into Washington and the U.S. Senate that provided much of the book's fascination. In A Shade of Difference onetime U.N. Correspondent Drury fails to make the U.N. come alive in the same crackling way, and often mires his story in mawkish melodrama and details so fine that they manage to be tedious rather than interesting. Maybe the U.N. is that way, and Author Drury could not help himself. But the reader who managed to sit through Drury's long Senate sessions with rapt attention is more likely to doze when the U.N.'s machinery starts grinding.

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