Bookends: Oct. 28, 1985

(2 of 2)

This mammoth chronicle is Michener's longest yet, and like so many of those before it, contains perfunctory characterization, arid prose and an authentic gift for conveying the mighty sweep of history. This time the locus is the Lone Star State. Michener begins his tale in the early 16th century, when Tejas was unexplored Mexican wasteland. In the kilopage fictification that follows, events and personalities pass in review: the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto, Comanche raids, cattle drives, oil, religion, high school football, superpatriotism and real estate dodges. Much of this is fascinating, but it is propelled by a strange device: Michener imagines a committee appointed by a Texas Governor to investigate the state's history. Every time the story begins to gallop, accounts of the get-togethers slow the narrative to a plod. Even in Super-America, apparently, the only dependable result of committee meetings is ennui.

THE SECRETS OF HARRY BRIGHT

by Joseph Wambaugh

Morrow; 345 pages; $17.95

In a gritty, wind-torn burg near Palm Springs, Calif., a college student is found in a canyon, burned and shot to death. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Sidney Blackpool bridles at taking a case far from his own turf, but he cannot resist the six-figure job promised by the boy's millionaire father, which would allow him to quit the force. As usual, ex-Policeman Joseph Wambaugh keeps the uniforms blue and the humor black. Blackpool has also lost a son, and the key witness is another graying officer, Harry Bright, who now lies in an apparently irreversible coma. Also hampering the investigation are a midget who hopes for intimate contact with large ladies, and a Palm Springs houseboy who scouts gay bars for murder suspects in his best butch outfit. Without a program, the bad guys are hard to separate from the good guys, and Blackpool has a lot of trouble finding and confronting the truth. The ultimate message is bitter, but for the first time in seven novels the author's badge carriers contemplate suicide only briefly. They are survivors transformed by suffering. It is good to have them, and Wambaugh, back on the case.