Stephen Amidon's fourth and latest novel, THE NEW CITY, published by Doubleday, is an absorbing, if greatly flawed, effort.

Mr. Amidon seems intent on revealing the political and social disillusionment that emerged in the 1970's among Civil Rights and anti-war activists of the late 1960's. It is a perspective,which was neatly achieved by playwright Lanford Wilson in his drama, "The Fifth of July." Mr. Amidon has not yet achieved such subtlety. His vivid characters become enmeshed in a plot that neither they, nor the reader, can escape.

In THE NEW CITY, a philanthropic idealist, not unlike Stewart Mott, designs a model community, located between Baltimore and Washington D.C. It is comfortably integrated and apparently functions smoothly and democratically.

Three families - one black, two white - share the center spotlight in this New City, but their collective assumptions and presumptions lead to the unraveling of the dream, destroys their lives and everything around them.

It is a cynical view of shattered dreams, but it is manipulative. People act off of false assumptions, and a fascinating saga descends into irritating melodrama. I don't mean to assert that false presumptions and invalid interpretations often lead to people's unhappiness and misery. We are all familiar with individuals who play the race card in politics, but in this novel we are rarely given the internal maneuvers, merely the external results of such thinking. As a result, THE NEW CITY is devoid of admirable figures, and the result is a mocking of the dream weavers that inspired this special hamlet

Mr. Amidon is an interesting and talented enough writer to take seriously. THE NEW CITY does have a momentum that pulls you along, which makes its shortcomings that much more frustrating.

The author's muddled cynicism and jaundiced view of social idealism is the undoing of this novel, which promises but doesn't deliver.