ROBINSON

British film director Petit draws on his movie experience for his first novel—the sometimes surreal portrait of a London wheeler-dealer and his shadowy world. There are two mystery men here—the narrator and the eponymous Robinson. All we know of the narrator is that he has a job with a Soho film company, a crumbling marriage, and a house in the suburbs. As for Robinson, he comes burdened by comparisons. He looks like Harry Lime (as played by Orson Welles) and entertains like Gatsby. He made his money out of cold war art smuggling. The two men meet in Soho, where Robinson is a presence. The narrator half-consciously cuts adrift from society. Soon job, wife, and house are gone, and he's moved into Robinson's orbit, first as drinking companion, then as manager of his used bookstore, finally as editor of the hard-core porn movies that Robinson is directing in an old warehouse, surrounded by a bunch of losers he controls through ``ostracism and favoritism.'' Robinson is a corrupter (``Power, pain, pleasure...that's all that matters''), and the narrator is willing to be corrupted. Evil flowers. The leading porn actress is found dead on the sidewalk. Did Robinson push her off the roof? By now the narrator wants out, but before he knows what's happening, he's filming Robinson execute a member of the company- -the final image Robinson needs for his video scrapbook. In an apocalyptic ending, the narrator wanders ghostlike through a London paralyzed by rainstorms. Ambiance is what Petit does best. While his evocation of a world sunk in anomie is a modest success, his character-driven story is a failure: Robinson is just too much of a hand-me-down to be convincing.