Books: Skuldruggery and High Technology

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These opium poppies grow in Turkey. They are not your ordinary Papaver somniferum, but a new strain developed over eleven years by a Soviet scientist from Armenia. Infuriated by his government's decision to end the better-poppy-for-socialism program (his aim was to produce a more potent drug for medical use), Dr. Krikor Grotrian makes a deal to sell the seeds to an Armenian dealer, who smuggles them into Turkey. There, largely because they bear scarlet blooms rather than the more common white petals of opium flowers, they flourish undetected in the hinterland. What Grotrian does not realize is that heroin from his little flowers causes instant, hideous death. In England alone, more than 500 addicts are wiped out by the new-strain Turkish dope.

Enter the jolly trio of Sandro, a rich, glossy Italian count; Jenny, a golden-haired English aristocrat; and Colly, a wisecracking American who enjoys one of his nation's largest inherited fortunes. Relaxing in Istanbul, they stumble across the huge drug operation run by Mustafa Algan Bey, ostensibly Turkey's premier dealer in precious carpets. Their adventures take them in and out of jail cells, dungeons, buses, trucks and steamers and across the length and breadth of Poppyland. About the only peril they do not indulge in is erotica. However, Scotsman Ivor Drummond's dippy novel could also serve as a tourist's guide to Turkey. Caveat from Jenny re Istanbul; "Too many dead cats and too many live cockroaches."

THE STIFF UPPER LIP by Peter Israel; Crowell 187 pages; $8.95

Hashish, according to a character in The Stiff Upper Lip, "is the biggest growth product in France." A runner-up might be basketball, le basket, which the French have discovered with delight and ineptitude. As Private Detective B.F. (for Benjamin Franklin) Cage soon finds out in his third adventure sponsored by Peter Israel, the two trades can be slimily and bloodily involved.

The American detective represents a rich, impatient New York client who is paying a lot of money to locate his vanished, overfed son, believed to be in Paris. Cage and the City of Light are getting along fine until he gets involved in the misfortunes of a 6-ft. 7-in. black basketball star, Roscoe Hadley, known as "Adlay" to his Gallic worshipers. Cage winds up representing Adlay without fee against sundry real and imagined threats on his life from Paris to Amsterdam and some mob intervention from California. Nonmonetary compensation comes from a sexy Anglo-Parisienne who outsmarts just about everyone; la belle Valérie may even cure Cage of his addiction to Air France stewardesses.

Author Israel, a Manhattan publishing executive who lived for four years in Paris, writes intimately and amusingly about France, its people and institutions. Where else would you learn that the national anti-narc bureau is called the Central Office for the Repression of the Illicit Traffic of Stupefiers?

THE DEATH FREAK

by John Luckless, alias Clifford Irving and Herbert Burkholz; Summit 250 pages; $8. 95