THE STIGMATA OF DR. CONSTANTINE

Ecce Homo -- Dr. Constantine -- an attractive, ambitious, selfish scientist who is also a lapsed Catholic and works for a pharmaceutical company in Connecticut. Suddenly he blanks out, after an attack or visitation, to wake up with five wounds on his hands, feet and side which leave him with considerable sexual excitation as well as febrile terror. The various disciplines of our time are applied to his condition: a heartily pharisaical and earthbound Bishop publicly inveighs against him particularly after he performs an ""old Jesus"" miracle -- curing a leukemic child; a psychiatrist he consults briefly won't accept Constantine's notion that the wounds are psychotically self-inflicted; a hematologist, to whom he sends a blood sample, finds that it is very strange -- it won't clot and perhaps has great significance for medicine. But there's no hope for Constantine, holed up literally, losing endless pounds, hallucinating, conversing with a chorus of rats, wandering the streets and finally healed as he plunges to his death. Dulack has written two earlier books -- a golf story high on the hog called Pork and the glummer Vantage Ground dealing with a strike. This is an arrant showstopper. But the road you know where seems paved not so much with good intentions as questionable speculations, startling and often revulsive phenomena, and very little pleasure even where it nails your curiosity.