The Earl on the Ledge

THE DOVE WITH THE BOUGH OF OLIVE (279 pp.)--Dunstan Thompson--Simon & Schuster ($3.75).

In the old days, the heroes and heroines of religious novels were "good" people who practiced what the parson preached. Nowadays, as in the novels of Graham Greene and Mauriac, the religious hero is more likely to be a fallen fellow who depends for salvation solely on the mercy of God. In his first novel, U.S. Poet Dunstan Thompson has tried to avoid both extremes.

Katherine, Marchioness of Diss, once Katie O'Higgins of Washington, D.C., is planning a dinner at her palatial London home. Her list of guests does not include her estranged husband--a dry-as-dust marquess whom she married chiefly for his title. Nor does it include the only man she really loves--her son, the Earl of Hazelhurst, who despises his father, oedipuses his mother, and spends most of his life staying drunk. But Katie's list does include:

P:| Monsignor Royford, an American-born prelate who has made his niche among Belgravia's "ancient dames and debutante Pekinese."

P: U.S. Ambassador-Extraordinary Jim Calan, an oil tycoon who has come to London to drive a hard bargain with British diplomats. Shrewd, tough, likable, religious, Jim would have married Katie O'Higgins had she not refused to become a mere Mrs.

P: Poet Francis Jerringham, a Roman Catholic convert, who is acidly etched by his literary agent as a "Vatican valet" and "Roman meistersinger."

P: Atheist Lancelot Lawrence--described by a hero-worshiper as "the greatest poet in the world." Everyone knows that Lancelot's greatest poetry and deepest misery have been caused by his unrequited passion for Katie Diss.

P: Freddy Deline, a onetime acrobat and now an aging matinee idol who hopes to squeeze some Diss money out of Katie to back his new show.

As each prospective guest goes about London on his private business, he meets or crosses the tracks of his fellow guests, so that by the time they all get together at Katie's table, each man's private world has been described both by himself and through the eyes of others. Suddenly, there bursts into this assembly of unheroic mortals a strange instrument of Christian betterment--the Earl of Hazelhurst, drunk as a lord, and enraged with his mother to the point of suicide for having robbed him of the moral support of a saintly young friend. Yelling and storming, the earl hurls himself through the window and hangs teetering, "cradled between the metal stanchions of an awning."

Instantly, a marvelous change sweeps over the diners. In a trice, Oilman Calan has rigged a rope around a chimney, and Lounge Lizard Freddy Deline, the onetime acrobat, is dexterously swinging himself down to the precarious peer. Fashionable Monsignor Royford crawls steadfastly along a narrow ledge, twelve stories above the ground, to give absolution. Katie Diss prays to God for the first time in many years.

Author Thompson has the courage of his convictions. But before they reach the final, melodramatic pages, his readers may long for Graham Greener pastures: they must listen to page upon page of second-rate smart talk on the one hand and chummy religious matter on the other. The Dove with the Bough of Olive is a brave and interesting try, but it seems to prove that any author who attempts to mix the frivolities of Belgravia with the profundities of Heaven is in mortal danger of going straight to Hollywood.

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