Summer is the season for the cinematic...

Summer is the season for the cinematic block-busters full of glitz, action and beautiful sets. Forget those wintry foreign films and settle in for vibrant colors and blasting soundtracks.

It’s time for you bookish types to loosen up too. Coming soon to your local bookstore: A rash of Hollywood novels about the sexy, sleazy, splendiferous world of movie people and movie making. Or at least a fictional approximation of that world where somehow the films get made and the Oscars won, despite the fact that hardly anybody seems to be able to get out of the sack long enough to take a meeting.

Wait a minute. Nobody under 30 “takes a meeting” anymore. That went out with blackened red fish. The latest, coolest expression is that you have a “12:30 at Fox,” according to Los Angeles authors Lynda Obst and Carol Wolper, whose Hollywood novel Dirty Dreams (New American Library: $18.95; 298 pp.) deserves a far better title than that.

Carolyn is an Ivy Leaguer with Melrose Avenue style who dreams of becoming a film writer. She enthusiastically takes a secretarial job working for Nicole, the top female executive at Millennium Studios. And Carolyn lucks out: Nicole is one of the few women in Hollywood not threatened by another woman’s ambitions. The two don’t exactly become buddies, but they do become professional colleagues who really like each other.

Director Lance Burton has some rather unusual sexual fantasies that he’s determined to make into a costly smash hit he wants to call “Dirty Dreams.” (He likes to tie up his lovers with “neatly stacked antique Chinese scarves, each one exquisite and unique,” just for starters.) Nicole tries her best to save the studio from “Dirty Dreams” destruction, but Lance proves to be the wrong guy to come up against, with his nasty temperament and Mafia connection Joey Martucci, a classic Las Vegas small-time hood with big Hollywood ambitions.

“Dirty Dreams” is clearly the work of two genuine insiders. Obst, a movie producer, and Wolper, a screenwriter, understand the Byzantine politics of studio life. They gracefully illustrate how a studio executive can be doing an exemplary job one day and be out of work the very next. In the Reagan years of flagrant consumerism, even zip codes took on an aura of prestige. If you were LA 90049, you were in . (90046 wouldn’t get you a table in the kitchen at Spago.)

I can’t imagine any Malibu zip code not being in, so again I was having trouble with the title of a book, this time, Malibu 90265 (William Morrow: $18.95; 352 pp.) by Angelinos Linda Lane, a screenwriter, and Nancy Lee Andrews, a photographer. It turned out that I had trouble with more than the title of this silly and insipid Hollywood novel.

This time out the studio is called MCM (I thought that was a line of pricey leather handbags from Germany) and the nasty executive is B. J. McClintock. B. J. not only makes life miserable for his studio underlings, but has a thing for barely adolescent girls and a ranch (Rancho Virgo) out in Colorado where he keeps one named Bonnie Louise locked up.

His second in command is a wimpy young lady named Lara Miller, whose idea of a great evening is curling up with her cat, Peter, a Lean Cuisine and a screenplay.

On one of these evenings she chances on a property that she believes can be made into a winning movie. Lara takes the initiative to start the movie-making machine going. Studio financial trouble presents itself in the form of Eurotrash Prince Carlo Borromayo Capriotti and his Mafia godfather, Joseph Giannelli.

Meanwhile, back at the--yes, Rancho Virgo--Bonnie Louise escapes and hops a plane to L.A. to surprise her married benefactor, B.J.

“Malibu 90265” qualifies as lite literature, trimmed of any fat and flavor such as a healthy plotline. Oh, Lara does gets a bowl of cottage cheese thrown on her at the Polo Lounge. And Bentine Devorac, the daughter of a famous director, shops with . . . coupons .

The authors must have decided that physical description of characters other than what they are wearing went out with the silents: “Holly Dandridge was a classic beauty. She was gracefully approaching her mid-thirties. She was a combination of Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver coupled with the spunk of Cher.” (What color hair does she have if she resembles all three?)

It’s not a book to pick up history from either. “Today,” Holly’s hairdresser tells her, “we are going to do something out of the court of Louis the Fourteenth with your hair.” Later, “the TV star, half fourteenth century and half twentieth century, ran out of the soundstage . . . “

But there is a swell description of Ralph Lauren’s store on Rodeo Drive. The most exciting part of the story is when Bonnie Louise rings up a total of $11,800.50 in about 45 minutes there. Maybe the book should have been called “Ralph Lauren 90210.”

The long, hot summer in Hollywood continues with Secret Sins by Joann Ross (St. Martin’s Press: $19.95; 420 pp.). This steamy, predictable story is Ross’s hardcover debut (she’s published more than 30 novels). Baron Studios, run by the ruthless Joshua Baron, is running into some difficulties. His producer-daughter Leigh wants financing for a picture she really believes in, so Joshua consults a Mafia contact in Vegas, Rocco Minetti, to help out.

(I’m waiting for Minetti, Martucci and Giannelli to form their own shady production company in another book.)

Leigh likes work better than men. Then she meets dark-haired, handsome Matthew, who has burning ambitions to be the next Oliver Stone. Leigh crosses paths with Khalil Al-Tajir on a trip to Abu Dhabi: “On a cool, clear night, a spirited gallop across the desert is an unforgettable experience. . . . Beside her, dressed in fawn-colored jodhpurs, a loose white lawn shirt, and black boots, seated astride a magnificent black stallion, Khalil cut an undeniably striking figure.” Undoubtedly.

Leigh’s evil sister Marissa is an aspiring movie star, a copper-haired nympho with bad taste in clothes (when she wears them).

Meanwhile, movie star Brendan Farraday has big plans. He is a murderer (he killed his father and a young soldier); a rapist (he raped and beat up Tina, who is one of the good guys); a drug dealer (you didn’t think he was over in ‘Nam just to entertain the troops?); worst of all, he wants to be governor of California.

Can Farraday’s political ambitions be nipped? Will Marissa and Farraday take over the studio? Was Joshua committing adultery with his daughter? Can Matthew and Leigh ever find enough time to do anything besides make love?

You’ve even got a character in this book who likes to do strange things with Hermes scarves (he should meet “Dirty Dreams” Lance with his Chinese silk scarves).

And no summer would be complete without a trek out to the Hamptons, according to Gloria Nagy, a California expatriate, who has left the glitz of Beverly Hills behind her and moved east. Now she’s divulging the secrets to summering, East-Coast style, in her new novel, A House in the Hamptons (Delacorte: $18.95; 384 pp.).

Gina is married to Harry, whose best friend is Donnie. His wife is Janie, who is really, really rich. She’s the only daughter of Big Ben and Delores Cowan. These folks are Old Money.

Then there’s New Money in the form of New Jersey tough kid Rikki Bosco, who is having an affair with The Match, a pale and leggy, wise-cracking redhead who grew up on the streets of Brooklyn.

Nagy takes us through the tribal customs of the Hamptons: the down-to-earth working class locals versus the summer people; the celebrity-studded softball games in which players have to wear the crummiest clothes possible; the parties, the little hangouts in the local communities.

Trouble surfaces in the form of Fritzie, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike Harry and Donnie knew as teen-agers. Then, grandma Delores gets busted for drugs, a marriage falls apart and one of the friends faces a terminal illness.

Most of Nagy’s characters remain remote stick figures in a comfortable summery landscape. You just can’t emote with them. They dress so nicely, divorce with such understanding, die so gracefully. Meanwhile, The Match lights up every scene she’s in: “So what’s like not insulting to someone who thinks bein’ a movie queen is disgusto?”

Nagy’s talents are journalistic. She knows the territory she is explaining to the rest of us un-initiated in the rites of this unique culture. Her understanding of the Old Money-New Money battle out in the Hamptons could have been the backbone for a dandy piece of Vanity Fair reportage.