IN SHORT

Roy Blount Jr. gets all shook up over Elvis (Sterling). Daniel Suarez issues the Kill Decision (Dutton). Gordon Bowker spouts epiphanies on the life of James Joyce (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). David Duffy's hardscrabble detective is In for a Ruble (Thomas Dunne). Linda Fairstein'sNight Watch (Dutton) is predictably dark. Simon Rich'sWhat in God's Name? (Reagan Arthur) is divinely funny. Donna VanLiere dreams The Good Dream (St. Martin's). Bruce Wagner'sDead Stars (Penguin) sparkles. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele analyze The Betrayal of the American Dream (PublicAffairs). Michael Frayn's new farce docks on Ski os (Metropolitan). Cornelia Guest entertains healthily in the Simple Pleasures (Weinstein). Jim Holt plays "existential detective" in Why Does the Earth Exist? (Liveright). Greg Woolf plots the building of Rome (Oxford). Norah Vincent breaks into fiction with Thy Neighbor (Penguin).