Short Notices

MURDER IN CANTON by Robert van Gulik. 206 pages. Scribner's. $3.95.

.Something is amiss in the great port city of Canton in the year A.D. 680, when Judge Dee arrives from Peking, ostensibly to look into foreign trade. What is missing--and what the Tang dynasty's master detective is looking for--is a fellow named Lew, the Imperial censor and pivotal power in the palace intrigues of the capital. Lew soon turns up dead, murdered by a delayed-action poison. The judge, of course, finds his culprit after dealing with a clutch of lively characters: the blind and beautiful Lan-lee, who collects crickets; Zumurrud, a half-caste belly dancer; Mansur, the arrogant, sybaritic leader of Canton's Arab community.

This is the 16th Judge Dee novel by Robert van Gulik, 57, who is the Netherlands' Ambassador to Japan and an Oriental scholar. His writing lacks somewhat in professional sheen, but Scholar Gulik more than compensates with rich and accurate historical detail of the Tang dynasty. The manners and mores, the factionalism and regionalism of that ancient era suggest that modern China is not, after all, much more adept at maintaining the writ of Peking over the vast, disparate reaches and peoples of the Asian Goliath.

HANGER STOUT, AWAKE! by Jack Matthews. 151 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $3.95.

Clyde Stout is a teen-ager who works in a small-town gas station, worships his Chevy and a hard-hearted local girl. One day he discovers a unique inner resource: he can hang by his hands for two, three, four minutes at a stretch. A local gambler begins to make book on him, but "Hanger" sees his talent only as a means for buying new and shiny presents for his two loves. In the end, he loses the girl, is cheated of his winnings, gets drafted, sells his car, and shrugs. In this gentle first novel, told with a fine ear for adolescent patois. Author Matthews, 42, who teaches English at Ohio University, offers something of a literary atavism: a story about pure innocence that encounters pure evil and couldn't care less.

A SECOND-HAND LIFE by Charles Jackson. 337 pages. Macmillan. $5.95.

Twenty-three years ago, Charles Jackson wrote The Lost Weekend, a successful first novel about a problem drinker. He has been a problem novelist ever since. The Fall of Valor (1946) was about a homosexual, The Outer Edges (1948) about paranoiacs. This one is about a nymphomaniac, which ought to give it a somewhat more eclectic appeal than the previous two. Trouble is, A Second-Hand Life is more a case history than a novel. Winifred Grainger can't take her mind off sex or, specifically, the male sex organ. But all she does is talk about it to Harry Harrison, her confidant and lifelong friend, who has a problem too. He can't stand the whole nasty business.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.