BOOK REVIEW : An Outrageous Tale of Total Corruption on a Small, Sad Island : CARIBBEAN TIME BOMB: The United States’ Complicity in the Corruption of Antigua <i> by Robert Coram</i> . William Morrow: $25, 278 pages

Both more and less than just another tropical paradise, the island of Antigua lies about 1,200 miles southeast of Miami at the tail end of the Leewards.

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A mere 9 by 12 miles in total area, it is augmented by two adjoining islands: Barbuda, with a permanent resident population in the low hundreds, and Redonda, entirely uninhabited and likely to remain so, since it’s almost entirely vertical, the cone of a collapsed volcano.

For the last few decades, Antigua proper has been an increasingly trendy winter vacation spot, with more than 40 hotels catering to North Americans and Europeans. As in other tourist meccas, the conditions that make life miserable for the residents enchant visitors.

There’s no fresh water on the island and only a brief, undependable rainy season.

In good years, a few wizened vegetables can be coaxed out of the depleted soil, but virtually all other food must be imported. Although there is now a desalination plant on the island, the pipes to the fields have never been completed, and the treated water winds up back in the sea.

People continue to collect water as they have for centuries, in rooftop gutters that flow into cisterns. When the rainfall is scantier than usual, water must be bought and barged in from more fortunate islands, at a cost comparable to rum.

Antigua is grindingly, desperately poor, second only to Haiti in general wretchedness, though far less populous.

The sugar industry, once the mainstay of the island’s economy, no longer exists, and halfhearted, inept attempts to develop other cash crops have failed.

For the last 50 years, Antigua has existed as the private fiefdom of Prime Minister V.C. Bird and his two contentious sons, a corrupt dynasty kept firmly in place by gigantic infusions of American government funds.

This nefarious partnership is the prime subject of Robert Coram’s “Caribbean Time Bomb,” an extension of his 1989 article in the New Yorker. Readers who missed that piece will find the essentials here; those who read it then will learn that matters have gone from atrocious to indefensible.

(A diverting but irrelevant chapter about a group of writers who dubbed themselves Redondan Royalty lightens the tone without mitigating the bleak conclusions.)

Antigua is financially, morally and politically bankrupt; its pristine beaches polluted, its government composed of rascals and villains, its people destitute and its shaky infrastructure in ruins.

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According to Coram, the island has become a haven for swindlers, drug dealers, bail jumpers and gun runners whose activities are tolerated and supported by the American government and eagerly encouraged by the infamous Birds, who profit mightily from the sale of concessions.

Unfortunately, most of Coram’s informers insisted on anonymity. One of the few who allowed his name to be used in direct quotations is Tim Hector, a firebrand journalist and passionate foe of the Bird family, a man with unfulfilled political ambitious of his own.

Though Coram’s conclusions are clearly well-founded and the tragic effects of a half-century of corruption and collusion obvious, in many cases the allegations remain unproven. V.C. Bird himself, aged and infirm, still retains his iron grip on the country.

Coram’s diligent, repeated attempts to interview the Bird family ended in frustration. Either they avoided him entirely or were so evasive that he learned nothing.

A disproportionate number of Coram’s most scandalous revelations culminate in abandoned legal actions, secret bank accounts, token penalties, unproven charges, lost or hidden documents, and stony silence from the U.S. State Department.

One unnamed State Department official is quoted as saying that since the only news that ever comes out of Antigua is bad news, “we wouldn’t care if the place just went away.” According to Coram, the dregs of the international underworld have already staked their claims--welcomed by the ruling family and ignored by the United States.

A decade ago, the question of where Antigua might go if we closed our military and naval stations on the island was a legitimate cause for concern.

Now that the specter of Caribbean communism has all but evaporated, Coram interprets the continued American presence on Antigua as an endorsement of the Evil Empire of the Birds, demonstrating his case with dramatic and mysterious examples of our government’s involvement in the affairs of this small sad country.