FICTION

GABRIELLE: An Entertainment by Albert Guerard (Donald I. Fine: $20; 186 pp.). Graham Greene liked to call his lesser novels “entertainments” because they weren’t meant to be taken seriously, being dedicated more to diverting readers than to grand themes. Albert Guerard, a former Harvard professor and novelist now teaching at Stanford, has borrowed Greene’s characterization for his novel “Gabrielle,” and although it’s not up to the master’s standards, the term fits. Thomas Randall, an up-and-coming assistant secretary of state, has come to Paris for a major conference and hopes to recapture some of his youthful freedom on his one free evening before the conference starts. Looking forward to a fine meal in an out-of-the-way bistro, and then an evening of casual, uncomplicated sex, Randall asks the hotel chambermaid, Gabrielle, to smuggle him past his bodyguards and members of the hotel staff. She agrees, and all goes well--until her sometime boyfriend, the taxi driver Luc, sees an opportunity to make money. Luc, thinking Randall a rich businessman, wants to hold him for a quick ransom, but this spur-of-the-moment abduction turns into “diplonapping” when Luc’s more sophisticated associates learn the American’s identity and realize that many right-wing dictators, deposed and otherwise, regard Randall as an enemy and would love to use him as a political hostage. Randall soon becomes a living hot potato, passing through the hands of Cubans, Basques and various Haitians, always accompanied by the sexy, self-possessed Gabrielle--with whom, of course, he develops an odd camaraderie. “Gabrielle,” though well-written, is often disjointed, the story wandering hither and yon for no better reason than a change of scenery, but those aren’t major faults in a novel that aspires only to entertain.