The Plot’s the Thing : THE BEST REVENGE, A Novel of Broadway <i> By Sol Stein (Random House: $20; 225 pp.) </i>

Sol Stein’s new novel, “The Best Revenge,” is a triumph of storytelling over just about everything else one might look for in a good novel. Subtitled “A Novel of Broadway,” Stein’s ninth work of fiction promises an insider’s view of the cutthroat commercial theater, and, given its title, leads us to believe there will be tension, glamour, egotism, maybe even a little mayhem before we’re done. Would it be too much to ask for full-blown characters and some real emotional payoffs as well? In 225 pages, probably.

Stein delivers the tension, the bloated egos and the mayhem, the latter in small doses. His protagonist, Ben Riller, is one of Broadway’s last independent showmen, a producer of plays that matter, whose zealous passion is born of both a commitment to drama and a love of the dice roll. His new show is a verse drama, of all things, and it is in rehearsal even though it isn’t fully financed.

Spending the production’s money before all of it is raised isn’t only unwise, it’s also illegal. The simple problem facing Riller is this: Can he get the show capitalized before the funds he’s already spending run out, before those investors who have put up their money become suspicious enough to call in the sheriff and the attorney general, before he has a heart attack and drops dead in his legendary office?

For advice, Ben turns to his father, who has been dead for some years. Louie Riller turns up in Ben’s head whenever summoned, and often at other times as well; he and his son carry on ongoing arguments about finances, wisdom, romance, gambling, risk, manhood --you know, life. Ben, it seems, is living in part to earn the respect and love of his departed sire. Papa Louie even narrates a few passages of the novel (the narrative voice keeps shifting from one character to another) and before long, he has reacquainted Ben with an old Italian loan shark whose son, still very much in the business, finds Ben his financing. For a price.

Part of Stein’s point seems to be that times are changing everywhere. Although the year is 1979, Ben’s beloved Broadway is already on its way to becoming an urban ghost town. And even the colorful world of the classic New York shylock has been replaced by a kind of numbing corporate usury. The deal that Ben and Nick Manucci strike complicates as the pace of “The Best Revenge” begins to race, with potentially lethal monkey wrenches being thrown from every direction. Yet it is struck not in the back of some Italian grocery store of Ninth Avenue but in a sleek, high-security office atop the Seagram’s Building. As the ‘80s approach, it’s a sadder, grayer world.

There’s nothing startling in this news, but “The Best Revenge” might have been a fully satisfying pleasure even so, had Stein really been able to convey the inside workings of the worlds he’s portraying. Alas, his portrait of the modern-day shylock is pretty generic, and his description of the inner workings of a Broadway production are sketchy, and sometimes inaccurate. Even in 1979, the important critics did not attend opening-night performances but went to one of the final previews to give themselves extra time on deadline.

The lack of detail about the production is compounded by a lack of imagination about the characters who people the street. The only one we spend any time with other than Ben is his dyspeptic accountant (in reality he probably would be not an accountant but a general manager) who is drawn in familiar colors as a fretful but sentimental bean-counter. By the use of the generic and the sketchy, Stein gradually erodes any pleasure we might have in feeling as if we’re really in the hands of an insider. That’s a serious problem, because half the fun of a thriller is milieu.

Yet despite all this, “The Best Revenge” is just about impossible to stop reading. Stein, who was co-founder of the publishing house Stein & Day, does know how to write about risk and negotiation, and he does understand the acceleration of pace. There’s a sleek, almost screenplay-like raciness to his prose, which is a kind of substitute for real style.

Is this a good thing? In the world of literature, probably not. In the realm of getting through a coast-to-coast airplane trip, however, “The Best Revenge” will more than do the trick, and you won’t wake up thinking about it the next morning.