Death of a Groper

THE PROSPECT BEFORE US (266 pp.)-- Herberf Gold--World ($3.50).

A prevalent hero in serious U.S. fiction is the groper, a man who does not know quite what he wants and usually makes himself miserable trying to get it. In each of his two novels, one of the newest recruits to the genre, Cleveland-born Herbert Gold, 29, has focused on a hard-at-work groper. His first novel, Birth of a Hero, featured a middle-aged father of three groping for a new personality in an extra-marital love affair. The Prospect Before Us tells the story of a pudgy Cleveland hotel operator who suddenly starts groping for personal integrity instead of the fast buck.

At novel's start, Harry Bowers, bald and fiftyish, is on top of the world. The world, for him, consists of the Green Glade, a third-rate fleabag hotel on Prospect

Avenue in Cleveland's business district.

Harry runs the Green Glade like a fiscal acrobat, balancing it on a tightrope of mortgages, bank loans, big and little deals.

Like any king of the bankroll. Harry has his fawning circle of jesters and helpers. Jake of the G. Washington Motel is happy to send an overflow couple to the Green Glade for their illicit love-making as long as he gets his commission. Gil Leary tickles Harry's "sensayumer" with his birdbrain notions of a Green Glade lounge bar and partnership. Harry's brother. "Morris the Flop,'' sponges off Bachelor Harry to support a wife and kids. In his disciplinarian moods, Harry reminds them all that life is "doggy dog," his own squirrel-lipped version of dog-eat-dog.

When Harry stops playing it doggy dog, he and The Prospect Before Us unravel fast. A young Negro girl from a civil rights association maneuvers him into renting her a room in the Green Glade. As if on cue, the Jakes. Gils and Morrises, the banks and realtors all land on Harry: so do fragments of his own hotel tiles, loosened by an unfriendly hand. Stubborn Harry doesn't scare, but all he can salvage from his tiny, crumbling domain is a brief, implausible love affair with the Negro girl. Reverting to me-first principles, he sets fire to the Green Glade for the insurance, then, in a strangely selfless about-face, dashes into the flames and loses his life trying to save the girl's.

Despite its shaky, melodramatic plot line, The Prospect Before Us' is alive with the nervous tempo of big-city sights, sounds and smells. Too often, however, Author Gold uses the camera eye and forgets the developing tank, leaving the meanings of characters and whole chapters to be puzzled over and dimly glimpsed, like murky film negatives.

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