The Devil Is Alive And Hiding on Central Park West

ROSEMARY'S BABY by Ira Levin. 245 pages. Random House. $4.95.

What's new on the best seller list these days? For one thing, there is an old-fashioned witches' tale in a modern cauldron. At the start of Rosemary's Baby, Author Ira Levin (who wrote the stage version of No Time for Sergeants and the mystery novel A Kiss Before Dying), sets the tone with the question "Is Satan dead?" He then proceeds to create suspense by operating on the theory that a little Catholic guilt can go a long way.

With the meticulousness of a ghoul in a catacomb, he establishes his heroine Rosemary as a lapsed Catholic. Her story begins when she and her ambitious actor-husband, Guy, take up residence in the Bramford, a prestigious and fabled apartment house on the West Side of Manhattan--a place obviously modeled after the proud, gloomy old Dakota, on Central Park West. One of the fables of the Bramford concerns the prevalence of witches there.

Rosemary and Guy, hip young sophisticates, scoff at such superstitious notions. And soon, in fact, Guy's acting fortunes are on the rise. But then, one by one, untoward events happen: a ghastly suicide, a sudden blindness, a paralytic coma. Dark signs and otherworldly hints occur: black candles, "tannis root" or Devil's Fungus, missing articles of clothing.

The real fun begins after Rosemary becomes pregnant. She firmly convinces herself that her neighbors are a coven of witches, that even her obstetrician is in league with them, and that they are casting their designs upon her baby-to-be for their own diabolical purposes. The plot hinges on whether Rosemary's fear is real or a fantasy twist brought on by her turning from the faith.

Everyone to his own religion, Levin seems to say, and worship of the Devil is one. Ultimately, there are two tests for any thriller or piece of horror fiction: 1) does the author play fair, yet come up with a shocker of a denouement? and 2) is the reader's willing suspension of disbelief rewarded with a final close-the-book aspiration of relief as he returns to his own world? Author Levin bats fifty-fifty. On the one hand, the ending of Rosemary's Baby, though inevitable, is flat; on the other hand, it is as unsettling as the first stirrings of a poison-ivy rash at the conclusion of a picnic.

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