TANGIER

Hard to imagine a novel called New York or London. But Bayer, with a smaller pond to fish, does quite nicely by today's Tangier, entertainingly poking at the ""sweet limbo"" of its expatriate colony. The eye is piquantly jaundiced: Bayer's infidels break down into three major classes--the rich American philanderers, the artistic English pederasts, and a wraithy group of Europeans with unclear pasts. There's Robin, a failed poet-turned-gossip-columnist and police informer; Zvegintzov, a pathetic ex-Russian-spy; Lake, the comically self-important American consul; Inigo, the successful and completely corrupted South American painter. No one sneezes in this book without someone else responding with an immediate gesundheit of varying benevolence, and Bayer uses the character of the Moroccan police inspector, Hamid, to keep track of all the intrigues and reactions: he's a sort of nightwatchman of unsavoriness, while at the same time involved in trying to figure out his mystifying Eurasian mistress. Relying less on plot than local detail to pop open the kernels of its motley characters, Tangier handles some standard, ever-workable formulae respectfully; there's little dash, few fireworks--but it's all told cynically, divertingly.