CROOKED HEARTS <i> by Robert Boswell (Dell: $9.95) </i>

Robert Boswell introduces the the reader to the Warren family in an oddly upbeat moment: a party celebrating their second son’s decision to drop out of college. (The Warrens celebrate failure regularly--it’s about the only thing they have to celebrate.) But after this quirky, original opening, the story quickly degenerates into a turgid soap opera that borrows heavily from “Death of Salesman.” Charley, the eldest son, can’t forgive his father’s marital transgressions, and this once-promising young man’s monomaniacal desire for revenge unleashes a series of improbable disasters that make the Lomans’ misfortunes seem like an amusement-park ride. Boswell creates some curiously endearing characters, but he subjects them to such arbitrary cruelties that the reader loses interest in “Crooked Hearts” long before the novel stumbles to its conclusion.