Books: Bores Off Bounds

THE Vicious CIRCLE (310 pp.)—Margaret Case Harriman, illustrated by Al Hirschfeld—Rlnehart ($3).

She was an innkeeper's daughter, and none of the big shots dazzled her. To little Margaret Case, the celebrities who hung around father Frank Case's celebrated Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan were just a lot of gabby customers. Doug Fairbanks Sr., who had just made his first picture, was a real pal and used to skip rope with her on the roof. But the bunch that ate lunch together almost every day, at a round table in the Rose Room, had little time...