Books: All This & Popcorn Too

THE BEACH HOUSE (366 pp.)—Stephen Longstreet—Holt ($3.50).

Mike Zelsmith, film producer, is on the skids. It is years since he won his last Academy Award. His marriage is heading for the breakers while he guzzles Scotch on the rocks. Fed up with Mike's arty epics and domestic antics, his movie magnate father-in-law cuts off his bank credit. The Hollywood gripevine says that Mike Zelsmith, whom "even intellectuals respect," is about to make his first "quickie," a $300,000 thriller.

But Mike, who collects Goya etchings and reads Bernard Shaw, has "an ego as big as...