The Macguffin

In this exuberant, offbeat novel, the wildly inventive Elkin ( George Mills ) unleashes a Hitchcockian MacGuffin (the narrative spirit) which takes over the ebbing life of Bobbo Druff, 58, the fairly honest but bribable street commissioner of a mid-size American city. Kafka-esque unseen enemies and their supposed spies, perhaps including Bobbo's newly acquired mistress, Meg Glorioso, may be trying to nail him for an unspecified crime linked somehow to the hit-and-run death of the Lebanese Moslem Shiite girlfriend of his son Mikey, a 30-year-old ninny. Bobbo winds up talking to the MacGuffin and eventually locks him out of his house. Elkin's imagination flags toward the end, but he has rewarded us with many comic turns, including the courtship of Bobbo and his future nagging wife under Hays Office rules: Bobbo has had to keep one foot on the floor at all times. First serial to Playboy. (Mar.)