DO NOTHIN' TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME

Wainwright (three in 1977 alone) again. This time his unpleasantly macho-angry, middle-aged British protagonist-narrator is called Maurice Luckhurst, and Lucky's specialties are hating his wife (""my own tame whore"") and loving his work--leading a jazz band. In fact, obnoxious Lucky spends most of this novel talking jazz ad nauseam, which enables-Wainwright to stretch out a thin plot about Lucky's nightmarish involvement with another man named Luckhurst, whose wife has supposedly been kidnapped. (It would have made a sharp short story.) As usual with the vile Mr. W., the police are pigs, the women fire cows, the energy level is hyper-high, and the aftertaste (if you get that far) is foul, most foul.