The Tokyo Bombers

By R.Z. Sheppard

Frank Deford's rakish domestic import, Love and Infamy (Viking; 516 pages; $24), is made in America from mostly Japanese parts. The background is historical (the Empire's plan to attack Pearl Harbor); the plot is driven by fantasy; and the characters, both heroes and villains, are shaped from durable polystereotype. On a Consumer Reports rating chart, the novel would get half a meatball.

Call it a nexus, a linking of best-seller components: war, romance, treachery and the sort of cross-cultural trim that has Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, mastermind of the Pearl Harbor strike, spouting about American baseball. He hates the Yankees for their brute power and likes the adroit Cardinals because "they play the game more like we do." This used to be called sneaky, though Deford, a veteran sportswriter, scores one for international correctness when Yamamoto notes that Westerners use the term "element of surprise" when referring to their own wily tactics.

The old sea dog upstages the novel's principals: the lovely Miyuki; her husband Imperial Navy Lieut. Kiyoshi Serikawa; and his longtime buddy Cotton Drake, an Episcopal missionary raised in Japan. Kiyoshi is ordered to Honolulu to gather intelligence, and back in Japan his wife and best friend fall chastely in love. Cotton also catches wind of Tokyo's plans and becomes an amateur spy.

Deford is not reckless with historical evidence; he simply detours around it. For example, he mentions U.S. ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew but not that Grew was warning his superiors about danger to Pearl Harbor as early as January 1941. Love and Infamy has a little something for everyone, historians and World War II veterans excepted.