HENRY AND CATO by IRIS MURDOCH 375 pages. Viking. $8.95.
This curious batch of novelizing is Iris Murdoch's curtsy to a literary form perfected by Graham Greene: the semi-serious religious melodrama in which the Hound of Heaven barks fiercely, bites someone on the ankle and then makes a mess on the kitchen floor. Cato Forbes is the failing priest, a convert hung over from a long binge of mystical intoxication.
Cato, suitably costumed by the author in a soiled cassock, crouches in a moribund mission. His sole parishioner is an apprentice thug named Beautiful Joe,...