AMERICAN CHROME by Edwin Gilbert. 448 pages. Putnam. $5.95.
Conspiracy is afoot. Clearly, the writers of the big bad sub-novels have secretly banded together, in the interest of economy, to pool their characters. The same people with the same names keep popping up.
Consider Tony: within a month he appears in Author Gilbert's big bad book about the auto business in Detroit and in another novel about the same thing, John Quirk's The Hard Winners. In both books, Tony is the handsome, talented but weak vice president who aspires to the top spot in the corporation but is blackmailed and loses out because...