THE UNDERGROUND HIDEAWAY

The trouble with The Underground Hideaway is that it doesn't lead anywhere: four wild animals who take refuge in a department store subbasement foolishly confirm their presence by robbing rattraps; forced to disperse, three fetch up--farfetchedly--in the Bronx Zoo. (The fourth, a rat, joins his brother on a garbage scow.) Arletta the skunk, her fond friend Ginger the flying squirrel, and Norton the oppossum who'd like to be a hero to the ladies are mostly foils for Eric the rat and Staten Island Fats, the altruistic cat who hides the displaced; these two have personalities as inspired as their names but the story gets away from them. Diffused, adventitious adventure, no match for the author's first stinger, Alon and the Army of Ants.