Indecent Proposal

Arab billionaire Ibrahim Hassan offers Joshua Cantor $1 million if he will allow Hassan to sleep with his beautiful blond wife, Joan. But this ostensibly ``indecent proposal'' has darker overtones for Cantor, whose parents survived the Holocaust. He's a corporate speech writer with an average salary and he's ``tired of being poor.'' He's also afraid of losing his well-bred wife. Joan has never complained about their financial situation, but now Joshua's whining drives her to consider Hassan's offer. Cantor, of course, is against it; but he's too simplistic in his outlook for a reader to share in his vaguely Faustian plight. In the end, Joshua does emerge as a likable and even memorable character, but along the way, repetitive monologue and frequently trite dialogue bogs down what is not an uninspired idea. Engelhard wrote The Horseman. (Feb.)