What the world needs is a suspense novel in which a guileless Arab touring New York stumbles across a gang of Macadamia nut smugglers and is pursued across the wastes of Scarsdale by admen armed with barbecue spits, while sullen peasants riding power mowers close in menacingly. In the meantime, thriller writers still prefer the Mideast or Southern Europe for their setting. Two of the better new blood-and-Baedekers:
DECISION AT DELPHI, by Helen MacInnes (434 pp.; Harcourt, Brace; $4.95), is a reasonably diverting romance that is not as taut as it should be because...