That Old Gangrene of Mine

CHOICE CUTS by Thomas Boileau & Pierre Narcejac. 207 pages. Dutton. $3.95.

No one who could spend an enjoyable morning strolling through an operating theater or casualty ward of a hospital can fail to have an entertaining and enjoyable time with Choice Cuts, as nasty a piece of fiction as ever came out of France. Authors Boileau and Narcejac have apparently concluded that two hacks joined together will make one writer, and furthermore that parts of seven people stitched together make up one man. Neither assumption is correct.

The reader may be aware of recent advances in surgery by which an amputated limb can be successfully reunited with the victim. He may then be induced to suspend his natural incredulity when told that a criminal condemned to death has donated his body for dismemberment in the interests of science, and that all the parts will be usefully employed to patch up other people. The French government, as representative of a loffical people, has worked it out that such procedures will do much to repair the military disadvantages of having a smaller population than the U.S. or China; one soldier can be used again and again.

Meanwhile, everything is a sadistic voyeur's fun fair. The reader, like the characters, should be in stitches as the jolly Gallic authors follow the criminal careers of the separate members of the subdivided victim, grafted as they are onto blameless citizens. As for the anomalous occurrences in the bedroom, no mind need boggle. The upshot of this gruesome farce is that the head of the condemned criminal contrives to commit several posthumous murders.

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