Bookends: Sep. 1, 1986

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MASTERPIECE

by Thomas Hoving

Simon & Schuster; 320 pages; $17.95

It's a connoisseur-eat-connoisseur world out there: lies, low blows, sexual politics, thievery, bribery, betrayal and greed. In his first foray into popular fiction, Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and editor in chief of Connoisseur magazine, takes us into the international art arena, where a masterpiece has come up for auction. On the block is the Marchesa Odescalchi, a sexy full-length portrait by the 17th century Spanish master Diego Velasquez of his alleged mistress. Experts predict that the portrait will bring at least $11 million, an auction record for a single painting. Among the main competitors in the battle for the naked marchesa are two archrival museums, Washington's National Gallery and New York City's Metropolitan. The National is represented by its director, Andrew Foster -- young, rich, dashing and secretly a CIA agent. The Met's champion is Olivia Cartwright, whose mentor is the omniscient and fabulously wealthy Neapolitan dwarf Count Nerone (a good Velasquezian touch, since the artist painted a fair number of valuable dwarfs). Rivalry soon leads to attraction, which soon turns into love. Before the hammer finally comes down, love has led to Soviet intrigue, data bases, haute cuisine and unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Says the smitten Olivia to Andrew: "I want you, I want you . . . but I have to go. To see the Velasquez in the Kunsthistorisches Museum."

APPLE'S EUROPE

by R.W. Apple Jr.

Atheneum; 264 pages; $14.95

Pack a universal drain stopper for Samarkand and a pepper mill on any trip. If you fancy a great British breakfast in London, bypass Claridge's and make for Fred's, a transport cafe in the East End docks. If you want to find the "timeless serenity" of the Tuscan master, Piero della Francesca -- well, there are a number of things you should do, and they are all set out with a welcome absence of guidebook rhetoric or literary flourish in this insistently readable book. The author, who was London bureau chief of the New York Times from 1977 to 1985, must never have spent a weekend at home. Besides a journalist's curiosity and a practiced eye for the pleasures of life, he has a knack for making destinations sound both seductive and easily negotiable. And the best part of it is that he is usually right. His long section on Britain is dead-on, and written with infectious gusto. His list of the best small restaurants in Venice would take even frequent visitors years of trial and error to draw up.

MAYFLOWER MADAM

by Sydney Biddle Barrows

with William Novak

Arbor House; 291 pages; $17.95