The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 41

Fiction Strips Dignity From the White House TAMPA TRIBl'NE-TIMES, Sunday. May 31). 1976 The Why and How Of Plea Bargaining then sends her to a New England women's college. There she has an affair with a lesbian. They quit the college and live together in a Vermont female hippie commune.

The lesbian is killed and Ginny marries Ira. a Vermonter. They have a baby girl and the marriage trundles along for four years, with Ginny greatly bored. Then she has a weird sexual affair with a psychopathic Army deserter. Ira catches them and boots Ginny out of his home.

Meanwhile, she gets a telegram that her mother is very ill. She returns to Hullsport but there's no rapport with her dying mother. After the funeral, Ginny packs her personal belong-ngs into a small bag and takes to the road. COMMENT: So there, in brief, is the story of a screwball female hippie. MICHAEL Z.

LEWIN introduces you to Detective Leroy Powder in his fourth novel. Night Cover (Knopf, Powder is a dour, hardboiled but honest copper, who runs the night shift of his Indianapolis precinct. In fact, he's so dedicated to the night shift that he has passed up promotion, even though it has wrecked his family life. And he runs a tight shop, acidly stepping on the toes of the young policemen to teach them the business. That is, he does until two odd cases smash his rigid routine.

Two bums are found murdered. At first it looks like narcotics, but Powder pushes the trail into the past, uncovers 17 murdered bums, and it leads him back into the Police Department itself. In the other case, Powder gets himself involved with Rex, a Maoist youngster, then has to solve the mysteries of a missing girl and a robbery at a school for disturbed young people. COMMENT: Not too exciting. JEROME CHARYN has written a sa a former prosecutor and Cressey is a sociologist who has observed and written about police departments, probation offices and prisons throughout the country.

The authors draw upon these experiences to describe the journey of an imaginary defendant, Peter Randolph, as he is processed through the criminal -justice system. Police arrested Randolph in the act of breaking into a residence in the early hours of morning. The prosecution charged him with the felony of burglary which carried a maximum of five years in the state prison. After serving two months in the county jail, Randolph pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of trespass and the judge placed him on five years probation. THE DISPOSITION of Randolph's case was the result of plea bargaining between an assistant prosecutor and Randolph's public defender and is typical of what happens daily in all criminal courts including those of Hillsborough County.

Rosett and Cressey skillfully use Randolph's "odyssey" to describe the inner workings of the criminal justice system. The authors feel that plea negotiations are not only necessary but also desirable. The system not only keeps the ever-increasing number of criminal cases at a manageable level but it also personalizes the criminal justice process. Plea bargaining gives discretion to prosecutors, defenders, probation officers and judges to consider a defendant's background, the type of crime commit- -ted, the available evidence and the feelings of the victim of the crime. Justice by Consent is a thoughtful and clear account about the nature of criminal law and the function of punishment in our society.

As a former prosecutor and involved participant in many plea negotiations, I commend the book to every citizen who is concerned about the administration of criminal justice MAXWELL WILLIAMS. Mr. Williams is Assistant County Attorney for Hillsborough County and a former prosecutor on the staff of State Attorney E. J. Salcines.

The Nixon scandal has stripped dignity from the White House and laid it open to some of our novelists. Irving Wallace, who usually writes of sex. turns to suspense in his tenth novel and has the Director of the FBI plotting to assassinate the President in The Document (Simon Schuster, The President is sponsoring the 35th Amendment to our Constitution for law and order. Christopher Collins, the new Attorney General, is supporting it despite his private misgivings that it would abort the rights in the first 10 Amendments. On the other hand.

Director, Vernon T. Tynan of the FBI is bulldozing everybody in sight in behalf of the 35th. A whispered tip from the deathbed of his predecessor strengthens Collins" misgivings. He launches a quiet search for "The Document" and is horrified to discover a fullfledged plot by the FBI to take over the country. This sends Director Tynan, with all his power, after Collins' scalp.

The climax explodes in double murder and blackmail, as only Wallace can write it. and "The Document" turns out to be, not written, but a taped recording. COMMENT: You'll breathlessly read this one. THEN PATRICK ANDERSON, a native Texan and author of "The President's Men." murders the pregnant mistress of the President in his fourth book. The President's Mistress (Simon Schuster.

Donna returns unexpectedly to Washington and is found murdered in a house let to her by a movie magnate. Ben Norton, a young diplomat and her lover until she bestows her affections upon the President, becomes the determined sleuth. His search for the murderer leads him into the White House coverup. Washington political wheeling and dealing, and more murder and blackmail. The climax explodes in the White House as Ben finally discovers the murderer.

But the President ducks out of the sordid scandal by an eyelash. COMMENT: You'll burn midnight electricity despite its cost. LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS, a New York lawyer, has written a fascinatingly subtle and sophisticated story of the rise and fall of the Puritan ethic in his 25th novel. The Winthrop Covenant (Houghton Mifflin. Old John Winthrop, founder and first Governor of Massachusetts Bay colony.

laid out the Puritan ethic that there was no Hell, only Heaven, for the Boston colonists. But his grandson, a judge in the Salem witch trials, ran into a little Hell through his conscience after he had sentenced the witches to burning. Auchincloss fictionally follows the Winthrop family strain through three generations. He tells the story of Winthrop housewives, diplomats, society fill PATRICK ANDERSON He'll Keep Yon op Nights 7 T-TTJT Iigp Book Views And Reviews East Side to the other. But the gang, of course, comes a cropper.

The screwball girl is killed trying to bomb Isaac's office and the two boys wind up in the hospital. COMMENT: This didn't amuse me. STEPHEN MARLOWE, really a brilliant writer, who has just finished a year as writer-in-residence at William and Mary College, plunges you deeply into the world of the occult in his eighth novel. Translation (Prentice-Hall, Melody, the crippled daughter of Robert Garrick, newspaper editor of Martins-burg, is given the purported diary of Columbine, the mad French painter of legend, by an old gypsy woman in France. She returns to Martinsburg and retrieves a painting, which she believes is Columbine's masterpiece, from a mystery truck crash.

She hangs the picture in her home just as Martinsburg begins a joint celebration with its French sister city, Bourg St. Martin. Then Melody begins translating the diary. She suddenly loses her limp and the whole town of Martinsburg goes haywire, just as legend says ancient Bourg St. Martin did in Columbine's day.

In the climax, Gar? rick puts an end to the foolishness by slashing the picture. COMMENT: But I'm not an addict of occultism. HAROLD KING puts his imagination into the international events during the four days before Stalin's death in his second novel. Four Days (Bobbs-Merrill, But the publisher fails to give his accreditation for such a historical literary piece. Stalin suffered a massive hemorrhage at his Moscow villa in March.

1953. During the next 96 hours, a Polish flier defected to Denmark; the CIA and the British intelligence clashed over jurisdiction; the, U.S. Air Force launched a bomber attack exercise against the eastern half of our country; and American and British planes were shot down by the Communists over disputed territory. King attempts to weave all this into a fictional plot showing that the world teetered on the brink of World War III. Stalin's death, of course, put an end to the brink.

COMMENT: There's really no reason for this VIRGIL MILLER NEWTON JR. the phenomenon was in any way as sudden as the Viking invasions. It must be assumed, therefore, that like changes of climate elsewhere, it was a very gradual process. This may of course be wrong, but barring evidence to the contrary, it-must be assumed to be the case, and Poertner's theory then can carry no weight. Oddly, the writer neglects to mention the growing wealth of lands directly south of the Viking territory, in the Caro-lingian Empire.

There one could find the inviting prospect of rich plunder exposed to the marauding adventurer by the breakdown of government after the death of Charlemagne. Also, the possibility of trying to forge new trade ties with Constantinople, the great marketplace of Europe, is not mentioned. The civil wars that broke out in France and Germany among Charlemagne's heirs must have disrupted the old trade system, which had been the Norsemen's only real contact with the outside world. Whatever the causes, it was a unique adventure. This book, on the whole, is a worthwhile introduction to it GEORGE F.BOTJER.

Dr. Botjer is a member of the history faculty of the University of Tampa. tirical farce about the New York City Police Department in his ninth novel, Marilyn the Wild (Arbor House, Lieut. Isaac Side), tough and incorruptible, rules the Lower East Side of New York City with a dictator's hand. But he has three minor problems.

His old mother collects Arab trash, his younger brother refuses to leave the alimony jail, and his daughter, Marilyn, sleeps high, wide and handsome about the city. Then a major problem develops. Rupert, the teen-age son of his best friend, organizes the "Lollipop Gang" composed of himself, his screwball girl friend and a Chinese pal. Its dedicated purpose is to embarrass Isaac from one end of the Lower The Norse Adventure: Unique and Readable JUSTICE BY CONSENT: PLEA BARGAINS IN THE AMERICAN COURTHOUSE, by Arthur Rosett and Donald R. Cressey.

Llppincott, $10. Most American citizens have few occasions to visit their courthouses and even fewer opportunities to learn about what goes on there. They will no doubt be surprised to leam that nearly 80 per cent of all criminal defendants do not go to trial. Rather, their cases are disposed of by "negotiated pleas" worked out by the prosecution and defense and approved by the court. This process, which is loosely termed "plea bargaining," takes many forms.

First offenders, for example, plead guilty to crimes lesser than those charged by the prosecution so that the court will consider them as candidates for probation. Other defendants plead guilty to lesser charges in return for giving testimony and information to the prosecution which will implicate other defendants. Even the Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, pleaded guilty to a "negotiated plea" of tax evasion rather than stand trial on more serious perjury charges. THE AVERAGE CITIZEN is probably confused if not shocked at this method of disposing of criminal cases. Like it or not, however, plea bargaining is an integral part of our system of criminal justice and has been approved by the United States Supreme Court as "an essential component of the administration of justice which should be encouraged." Presidential crime commissions have studied the subject since the 1929 Wick-ersham Commission of Herbert Hoover and all but President Nixon's Commission sanctioned the use of the negotiated plea.

People obviously need to know more about this process and Justice by Consent will provide them with a fascinating analysis of what happens daily in their criminal courts. The authors, Arthur Rosett and Donald R. Cressey, began their research for the book when they were staff members of President Johnson's National Crime Commission some 10 years ago. Rosett is Shopping CONSUMER'S GUIDE TO BANKS, by Gordon L. WeiL Stein Day, $6.95.

This book offers the reader an outstanding opportunity to become familiar with the very basic role that banks and other financial institutions play in the monetary system of the United States. Although the author's intent and title of the book assume a posture of consumer advocacy, he does a very good job of tracing the evolution of financial institutions in this country from birth to present. There is a clear delineation of the roles assigned to banks and thrift or savings and loan institutions and the part each plays in the overall scheme of this country's monetary policy. The often heated competition among such institutions during their recent history has been calculated to get a piece of one another's action. The regulatory agencies have established the rules of the game in such a way that the banks receive the benefit of demand deposit (checking) accounts almost exclusively, while the savings and loan institutions are allowed to offer higher interest rates the ministry, as Miss Minerva sees his future.

However, Billy has other ideas. Billy is not a mean little boy but he is definite about what becomes a man. When Miss Minerva buys Billy a doll to play with, he successfully changes the subject when Miss Minerva shows it to him, and the doll is stored on the closet shelf to be forgotten by Miss Minerva. Miss Minerva is almost the exact opposite of Billy's foster mother. Aunt Cindy, a black woman who has taken care of Billy for several years.

Miss Minerva is tall and thin, and easily shocked. Aunt Cindy is large and round and when Billy crawls into her lap, her soft brown body gives him the love and security that he lacks now that he lives with his aunt. FRANCES BOYD CALHOUN captured the time and place and spirit of the locale in her wonderful book. All of her characters were based on real-life counterparts. Robert Drake best described Mrs.

Calhoun's work when he said: "Joy. That is the word which comes most readily to mind it is the joy of childhood, the joy of life itself but seen as all the more joyful because, we are aware of the sadness and sorrow which sooner or later must be dealt with. It's a great gift Mrs. Calhoun has given IRVING WALLACE Plot at the Top men and teachers, all bedeviled by the old Puritan ethic. And finally, in modern days, there's John Winthrop Gardner, a Vietnam hawk in our Department of State, whose son is an Army deserter and whose wife is an alcoholic.

As Auchincloss ends his novel, the alcoholic wife bares her soul in a letter to her deserter son. COMMENT: I enjoyed this because it's different. GERTRUDE SCHWEITZER, a veteran novelist, whose fictional output ranges from romantic suspense to the problems of a parish ministry, now attempts to delve into the intricacies of the New York newspaper business in her seventh novel. The Herzog Legacy (Doubleday. $10).

Sigmund Herzog. a German Jewish immigrant, founded "The Paper." a morning daily in 1875. He was successful up to a point because he printed the truth. He had hoped to establish a family dynasty with "The Paper," but daughters prevailed in his family. When he finally dies, David, a grandson, takes control and nearly runs "The Paper" into the ground with both his business and editorial foibles.

So Rebecca, his sister with a flair for journalism and with the backing of the family, ousts him as publisher and takes over. But her flair for journalism isn't sufficient ih the face of New York competition, and "The Paper" simply drifts along. Finally, her daughter, Clara, also with a flair for journalism, becomes publisher but she is forced to close it in its 88th year of publication. Mrs. Schweitzer apparently knows far more about the interplay in a Jewish family than she does about the newspaper business COMMENT: This disappointed me as an old newspaper editor.

CANNOT truthfully say that Mel Ar-righi thrilled me with his sixth novel, 180-page Navona 1000 (Bobbs-Merrill. It is the story of Al Lacey, an American professional assassin, who lives in England. He simply takes assassination jobs at $20,000 a head, never knowing his employer, and is quietly amassing quite a sum of money in a Swiss bank. That is, he was until he got himself involved in the Arab-Jewish hassle and his conscience begins tugging at his soul. He finally balks at assassinating a girl in Italy.

The Arabs immediately sense this and send an English assassin after him. The climax explodes with corpses all over the Italian landscape, because Al really can shoot. COMMENT: But I just don't like killing. LISA ALTHER tells the story of Ginny Babcock in her first novel, 504-page Kinflicks (Knopf, Ginny starts out as the Burley Tobacco Festival Queen of Hullsport, Tenn. She defies her father and explores sex with unacceptable young men.

Her father GORE VIDAL Tops Fiction List 5. Spandau, by Albert Speer. Mac-millan, $13.95. i. A Year of Beanty and Health, by Vidal and Beverly Sassoon with Ca-mille Duhe.

Simon Schuster, $9.95. 7. The Russians, by Hedrick Smith. Quadrangle-The New York Times Book Co. $12.50.

8. The Rockefellers, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Holt, Rine-hart and Winston, $15. 9. Doris Day: Her Own Story, by A.

E. Hotchner. William Morrow, $8.95. 10. Born Again, by Charles W.

Col-son. Fleming H. Revell-Chosen Books, $8.95. W76 Nw Yoi Tinea Service Current Best Sellers MARGINS for a Bank in order to capture the public's savings dollars. The author provides an interesting analysis of several of the more typical marketing programs currently employed by the banks and savings and loan institutions.

Of particular interest is the simplicity with which one can judge the relative cost benefit ratio of such programs against one's own needs. Mr. Weil offers sound advice in concluding that banking services should be approached by consumers as they would the acquisition of any other goods or services. The quantity, quality, and cost of services provided by financial institutions vary significantly enough to make it desirable for the consumer to shop around. Clearly, the banks are in the business of making a profit with your money.

It behooves tbe consumer to shop for the institution which will share the largest piece of this profit. KENNETH W. THOMPSON. Dr. Thompson is vice president for administration at the University of South Florida.

Returns us. and I like to think she must have experienced great joy in its composition. We must be sorry only that she did not live to know our own enjoyment of her very joyful HIPP. Mr. Hipp is bead of the special collections department at Tampa Public Library.

MISS MINERVA AND WARD Facsimile of a Classic THE VIKINGS, by Rudolf Poertner. St. Martin's, $12.95. This is not as thorough a study of the Viking (Norman) invasions as the classic work by Brondsted. On the other hand, it is more readable, and benefits from a plethora of maps showing the areas of Europe and the North Atlantic that the Vikings penetrated.

Also, the large number of photographs showing samples of Viking artwork helps to make this a somewhat above-average treatment of the Norse adventure. One of the great questions of history is what made these Northern barbarians burst forth on the scene of history so suddenly and so dramatically. Scandinavia, hitherto entirely outside the pale of Western civilization with the exception of some trade in precious stones, lumber and furs, now sent forth expeditions under such unlikely heroes as Ivar the Boneless and Sven Forkbeard to harass or conquer the British Isles, Iceland, France, Germany, parts of Spain, parts of Italy, and even the Byzantine Empire. THEY FOUNDED REYKJAVIK and Dublin, attacked London and Paris, extorted ransom from Seville, and set up a new kingdom in Southern Italy Poertner observes that the first effort to explain this outburst of activity was offered by a contemporary of the invasions. Dudo of St.

Quentin. Dudo suggested that the practice of polygamy, in combination with primogeniture, had created a class of young men without property or lawful prospects of any kind. Their parents were hard-pressed to even teach them a trade (which in some countries, by the way, was required by law, heavy fines being provided for not doing so). Further, those who did learn a trade often found their areas overcrowded. Thus, according to Dudo, they burst forth looking for employment opportunities, seizing other people's land and making a general nuisance of themselves all over Europe.

The writer feels that the element of primogeniture (whereby the eldest son inherits all of his father's property, usually a farm) may have been a factor in the invasions. He notes, however, that Brondsted, the aforementioned authority, considers this and other single-answer explanations too arbitrary and unprovea-ble. Looking for some broader causal factors, Poertner suggests that a change in the climate of Scandinavia (a drop in average temperatures) caused an acute economic crisis by reducing agricultural productivity. IF THE THEORIES relating to inheritance laws, are too arbitrary, this one would appear also to be deficient Evidence that there was an adverse change in climate does not indicate that William Green Hill The current best sellers, based on reports compiled by the New York Times from more than 250 bookstores in 110 communities throughout the United States: FICTION 1. 1876, by Gore Vidal.

Random House, $10. 2. Trinity, by Leon Uris. Double-day, $10.95. 3.

A Stranger in the Mirror, by Sidney Sheldon. Morrow, $8.95. 4. The Document, by Irving Wallace. Simon Schuster, $8.95.

5. Tbe Gemini Contenders, by Robert Ludlum. Dial Press, $8.95. 6. The Boys From Brazil, by Ira Levin.

Random House, $8.85. 7. The Choirboys, by Joseph Wam-baugh. Dclacorte, $8.95. 8.

Agent in Place, by Helen Mac-Innes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $8.95. 9. Kinflicks, by Lisa Alther. Knopf, $8.95.

10. The Deep, by Peter Benchley. Doubleday, $7.95. GENERAL 1. The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Simon Schuster. $11.95. 2. World of Our Fathers, by Irving Howe, with Kenneth Libo. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $14.95.

3. Sconndrel Time, by Lillian Hell-man. Little, Brown, $7.95. 4. A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95. MISS MINERVA AND WILLIAM GREEN HILL, by Frances Boyd Calhoun, a facsimile edition with an introduction by Robert Drake. University of Tennessee, $6.50. The bicentennial celebration has produced at least one positive effect in the proliferation of pewter Liberty Bells and stained glass "Old Glory" flags. Many out-of-print books have been reprinted and are now available for new generations of readers.

One book that deserves this honor is Miss Minerva and William Green Hill, by Frances Boyd Calhoun. Originally published by Reilly and Lee, the book was enormously successful, having gone through over 50 printings. It is ironic that Mrs. Calhoun did not live to see it in print, as she died within the year of its publication. Miss Minerva and William Green Hill is about Miss Minerva, a maiden aunt of William Green Hill (Billy), an orphan.

They live in the West Tennessee town of Covington, some 40 miles above Memphis. BILLY HAS COME to live with his aunt, to be raised with the proper respect for his elders and to be trained for.