Mixed Fiction

SEA-WYF, by J. M. Scott (255 pp.; Dutton; $3.50), is a seaworthy adventure novel with probably the most ingeniously constructed plot in the whole castaways-on-a-raft class. The story starts with a series of cryptic messages in the agony column of a London newspaper. The key message: "Sea-Wyf: Intend to find you by publishing story of 14 weeks and Number Four. Biscuit."

These mystifying words fascinate the book's narrator, an adventure-hungry journalist who uncovers the story behind the messages. He learns about the sinking of a refugee-crammed ship out of Singapore in 1942. Four of the ship's survivors lived 14 weeks on a raft; they knew each other only by nicknames. One, "Biscuit," was an Irish bartender; another, "Bulldog," a sahib type. "Number Four" was the ship's purser, a one-legged mulatto. "Sea-Wyf" (mermaid) was a handsome young woman of mystery, and much of the story concerns her saintly attempts to impose decency on the three men, although thirst, storms, submarines and rat-infested atolls worked to turn them into cowards and murderers.

In the end. to save food and water, the mulatto was left overside to swim for it. Ten years after the event, Bulldog, by now a Member of Parliament, receives a letter from the supposedly dead man threatening to expose the others as having plotted his death. Three men gather at Bulldog's castle in the Isle of Skye to decide what to do. The novel's outcome should not be told, for suspense is the book's chief asset. But it also points a moral--clear to all castaways--that no man is fit to judge another's right to live.

THE CAPRI LETTERS, by Mario Soldati (312 pp.; Knopf; $1.25), recalls that cultured characters from cold climates have always suffered a loosening of the critical faculties in the warm Latin air. Italians have repaid the compliment by making a traditional figure of fun of the visitors making love among the ruins. Americans, especially, are known as puritans who think sex is unvaryingly wicked. In terms of this myth, Italian Movie Director and Novelist Mario Soldati has constructed a neat little bedroom tragedy.

Enter first puritan: Harry Summers, an American major, who returns to liberated Rome after World War II as an art expert for UNESCO. Enter second puritan: his wife Jane, a Roman Catholic but, as she comes from Philadelphia, a puritan nonetheless. These two kill their principles to make a Roman honeymoon--not, however, with each other. The trouble with Harry is that he can only really enjoy himself if he knows he's being wicked. In Paris, he tries "laughing Simone from Marseille, a specialist in net underwear . . . and Mamai and Lisa and Danielle and Monique." His real fate, however, is a Roman prostitute called Dorotea--an "enigmatic goddess," whose "hair quivered slightly at the roots."

What Harry doesn't know is that his wife is quivering at her roots, too--over Aldo, a part-time actor, gigolo, spiv and, of course, a "god." Jane writes letters to Aldo in which she calls him "lord and master of my life." The attempt to recover these letters forms a plot as schematic as a shooting script.

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