Adventures with Danger

In this fast-paced but wildly implausible novel by the author of The James Bond Trivia Quiz Book , Heathcliff (Cliff) Dandridge, a 32-year-old, out-of-work New York television writer, decides he's going through a ``premature midlife crisis,'' and plans to go to Paris to shake it. Before he can leave Manhattan, however, Cliff is involved in a Hitchcock-style mix-up that leaves him in a no-man's-land between neo-Nazis, who think he's got the drop on them, and Nazi-hunters, who won't tell him what's going on. He takes off for Paris, unaware that he is unwittingly smuggling drugs, and becomes targeted by an insane drug-lord, Coloute, ex-chief of Duvalier's secret po lice. The police want Dandridge too. He runs; he hides; he has sex. (``Oh those French women, skilled in every aspect of love-making.'') He gets tough. The denouement is an overblown, simplistic cop-out. Immature and self-indulgent, Gurin's more-cynical-than-thou tone is as trying as the literary/kitsch-culture allusions scattered throughout this trendy book. (Apr.)