Books: Also Current: Jul. 24, 1964

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TRIAL AT MONOMOY by John Masters. 341 pages. Harper & Row. $4.95.

Since the early '50s, John Masters has turned out eleven books, most of them set against the Kipling backdrop of India under British rule. Bhowani Junction (1954), probably the best-known, was snapped up by Hollywood as a starring vehicle for Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. Novelist Masters has now tried his first U.S. setting. His fans are in for a letdown. There is no suggestion of the exotic about town meetings in a Cape Cod village, and Ava Gardner would not think of playing the prissy schoolmarm who passes for a heroine. But Masters' whole troupe could be rounded up in half an hour by Central Casting. There is the young floozy with a heart of gold, the first selectman who drinks, the third selectman who paints nudes on the sly, the young aristocrat who comes home with a beautiful Negro fiancée—and many more. By way of catharsis, they are all herded into a snowbound village hotel. Who will crumble, who will turn out to be true-blue? Since the main business of Hollywood these days is making films for TV, a weekly series based on Trial at Monomoy might run forever.