Bewitched Judges

GREAT MISCHIEF (247 pp.)--Josephine Pinckney--Viking ($2.75).

Christopher Morley wasn't there when his fellow Book-of-the-Month Club judges chose Josephine Pinckney's Great Mischief for March. That leaves the blame to be split four ways among B.O.M. Judges Henry Seidel Canby, Dorothy Canfield, Clifton Fadiman and John P. Marquand. They have bought a salable name (Miss Pinckney's earlier Three O'Clock Dinner was a bestselling Literary Guild choice, is now being filmed) but not a satisfactory novel. Apparently unabashed, they compound their great mischief by bracketing Miss Pinckney with Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. This tiresome little witch story, which flirts scrappily with the question of good & evil, is as far from the intent and purpose of Moralist Hawthorne as it is from literature--a considerable distance.

The hero of Great Mischief is Timothy, a pharmacist in Charleston, S.C., who dabbles in witchcraft. When the shapely

Witch Sinkanda shows up, Timothy is literally led to Hell. By day she's just one of shiftless Mr. Farr's many daughters, but at night she's up to all sorts of fearful business. She can slip in through a keyhole, hex the unwary and fly through the night air. When Timothy throws his Bible in the fireplace and burns the house down while two of its occupants are asleep, it looks like an accident, but Sinkanda knows better. She and Tim have an affair that is both earthy and unearthly. Together they fly to Hell for a visit to.the Devil, a scene which, as handled by Miss

Pinckney, is not up to the standards of a good pulp magazine story.

Eventually, Tim sees everything clearly, and manfully goes to face his retribution. But not without a lover's regrets: "Oh, Sinkanda! I don't know whether you are more a fiend or more a woman," said Timothy, embracing her. "If only we could have met under other circumstances! It should have been different, somehow." Sinkanda's answer: "Ah, my friend, how many star-crossed lovers have uttered that cry!"

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