Ulcers in Floral Hats

PRELUDE TO A CERTAIN MIDNIGHT (249 pp.) Gerald Kersh Doubleday ($2.50)

One foggy afternoon in London, ten-year-old Sonia was lured into a vacant house, attacked, and choked to death. So begins Prelude to a Certain Midnight, the fifth novel by British Novelist Gerald Kersh (Sergeant Nelson of the Guards, Faces in a Dusty Picture). For a few pages Kersh fiddles around the psychological fringes of the crime, then he runs through a roster of gaudy suspects.

Among others there are Sir Storrington Thirst ("he had a habit of laying his hands upon you"); mannish Asta Thundersley (she collects paintings of "tumors wearing spectacles, wombs in aspic, ulcers in floral hats"); The Tiger Fitzpatrick, spavined prizefighter ("all I want is a chance at this so-called Braddock"); Mothmar Acord ("a dish-shaped face, discolored by oriental suns and high fevers") ; Sinclair Wensday ("a cocaine personality . . . tall and popular . . . Galahad gone to the devil"). At his best Author Kersh writes like a comic Soho Gorki, drawing wicked, lively sketches of the barflies, pimps, fairies and phonies of London's bohemia. But Prelude never really gets going and never comes to an end, simply limping from sketch to sketch, as though even Author Kersh were never quite sure what he intended to say on the last page.

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