Books: Francoise Goes to Hollywood

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THE HEART-KEEPER by Françoise Sagan. 128 pages. Duffon. $3.95.

The heroine cannot decide what novçelist's nightmare she has stumbled upon. Confronting a homicidal maniac, she says: "I was drifting between James M. Cain and Kathleen Norris." Unfortunately, that is also the drift of Sagan's seventh novel, which is a little more weird than her usual blend of native wit and updated Colette. The characters and setting are American, but Dorothy Seymour, Hollywood scriptwriter, may as well be one of Sagan's Parisian cocottes: she wears St. Laurent copies, vacations on the Riviera, suffers liver attacks and has a quintessentially Gallic attitude toward love. Her latest suitor, Paul Brett, is another familiar Sagan figure, the older protector, handsome, successful, slightly triste—well he may be, putting up, as he does, with the fickle, indiscreet heroine.

Paul's troubles begin when Lewis Miles, a young, mysterious asexual acidhead, jumps in front of Dorothy's car. She takes Lewis home as if he were a wounded bird. It turns out to be the first nice thing anyone ever did for the lad, and he responds by knocking off anyone who threatens Dorothy even slightly. Cleverly, mind you. No indictments or messy trials, just plausible suicides, auto accidents, and prop guns that turn out to be loaded.

A lesser girl, say Lady Macbeth, might panic, but not Dorothy. She just launches Lewis on a film career, marries Paul, and the three of them live togather happily ever after. "Obviously I would have trouble stopping Lewis from killing people," she sighs, "but with a little supervision and luck . . . ''

Unless she starts supervising these fantasies, Sagan's luck will run out.