Mixed Fiction

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER, by Marcia Davenport (457 pp.; Scribner; $3.95) proves mostly that a writer with nothing much to say need never despair: the tabloids are full of stories. This one is about two old bachelor brothers who were found dead in a house full of junk (just like the famous Collyer brothers, who in 1947 were found dead in a junk-filled house in uptown Manhattan). Why, asks Author Davenport, did devoted brothers of good family and good education die in squalor and madness when they had scads of money in the bank? The answer: Momism. Old Grandma Holt dominated her married son, his gentle wife and their two young sons. Just as daddy is about to break from the Milquetoast mold, he is kicked in the head by a horse and killed. By the time the boys are freed by Grandma's own death, one is too crushed to stand up to life, the other is beginning to show that he has inherited some of Grandma's tyranny. Both are attracted to the same lusty Italian opera singer, and when she bears a child, neither brother knows which is the father, and the girl can't tell. Bit by bit, they withdraw to a life of bitterness, become the butts of neighborhood hoodlums, booby-trap the house and retire to an existence of unwashed queerness. When the police finally break into the house, the stench is pretty bad. Novels like this one, which draw on the pap of fact and melodrama, are reasonably sure of an audience. My Brother's Keeper has been tapped by the Book-of-the-Month Club, clear proof that the Collyer brothers did not die their strange deaths in vain.

LEOPARDS AND LILIES, by Alfred Duggan (278 pp.; Coward-McCann; $3.50), finds a veteran historical novelist taking the field for the English against France in the time of bad King John. Lady Margaret fitzGerold, a highborn widow, is forced into an unwelcome marriage with Sir Falkes de Brealte, a Norman bastard and the best crossbowman in all England. Margaret, a practical woman of 14, runs Falkes's castle, appreciates his long absences from home, and is only mildly annoyed when he scolds her for lowering the drawbridge too slowly. Lady Margaret survives the harrowing siege of Bedford and the fall of the House of Brealte, repudiates her husband, eventually suffers the ignominious fate of ostracism. In Leopards and Lilies, talented Author Duggan (The Little Emperors) is caught with his drawbridge down: the story is not as fleet as Angevin England's fast-moving Leopard banners. But, as usual, Duggan has a thorough grasp of the political and social hanky-panky of his period. The publisher offers unsatisfied buyers of the book any substitute title they may pick off the current bestseller list, but current bestsellers being what they are, readers might as well stick with Duggan.

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