LUCY BOOMER by Russell Hill (Ballantine: $4.99;...

LUCY BOOMER by Russell Hill (Ballantine: $4.99; 183 pp.). Hillntine writes clean, straightforward prose, and Jack Rabbit, the two-bit

college professor who narrates this novel, emerges as a credible, well-rounded character. Jack hopes to obtain the secret diaries of Lucy Boomer, a 93-year-old former secretary (and possible paramour) of five U.S. Presidents. In exchange, he has to kidnap her from a nursing home and take her back to Iowa to die. Along the way, they pick up Ahna, an aimless drifter who establishes a psychic bond with Lucy that seems every bit as convincing as Shirley MacLaine’s accounts of her past lives. Ultimately, everyone gets what he wants except the reader, who’s left wondering what a semi-nice guy like Jack is doing in this improbable “road story.”