Crystal River: Three Novellas

Escape artists, wayward travelers, misfits and adventurers stalk through these three spellbinding novellas, written in prose as lush as the Florida backwaters they frequently evoke. In ``Storyville,'' a bored lawyer steals his brother's boat and, together with an unbalanced female client, embarks on a foredoomed voyage in search of his father, missing for 14 years and presumed dead. ``Crystal River'' is about two redneck buddies, part-time lovers, whose winter canoe trip turns into a kinky criminal misadventure after they team up with an Annie Oakley-ish desperado who seduces them at gunpoint. In ``Tinian,'' a dark tale of suicide, incest and violence, a half-crazed poet pursues the wife who deserted him, following her to a remote Pacific island; hard on his heels are his solicitous brother, who had slept with the missing woman, and their mother, who becomes an erotic dancer on Guam. Quirky, haunted by obsession, Smith's ( Shine Hawk ) novellas tap hidden wellsprings of motivation and desire. (Sept.)