Competence, yes. Professionalism, of course. But there’s...

Competence, yes. Professionalism, of course. But there’s the mysterious other ingredient--the flair--that spells the real difference. This is what separates the writer of popular fiction who commands the high-six-figure advances from the rest of us. But whether the flair evolves gradually over a number of works or whether it bursts into full flower on the strength of one or two novels is the eternal fascination. And the current crop is an interesting balance of old hands, and relatively new ones, with the flair already firmly in place.

After a six-year silence, fans of Arthur Hailey should be happy to see the meticulous researcher/storyteller back in harness with The Evening News (Doubleday: $21.95; 576 pp.). Just as “Airport,” “Hotel” and “Wheels” stripped the mystery away from the air travel, hotel and automotive industries, so does Hailey’s latest novel take us behind the scenes of a major television network news operation at a time of both internal and external crisis.

In today’s society where a network anchorman may have a greater name, and face, recognition than most international political leaders, the plight of cool and heretofore unflappable Crawford Sloane when terrorists zero in on his family makes for high drama. Calling upon long-time colleague and ace war correspondent Harry Partridge for assistance may be the most natural thing in the world, but it’s sticky, too--the two men are not only on-again, off-again, rivals for precious air time since they covered Vietnam together, but the terrorist attack on Sloane’s family focuses on the lovely Jessica, Sloane’s wife and Partridge’s one-time lover (and still, at least with Partridge, a delicate and sensitive issue).

As CBA-TV News throws its worldwide resources into the seemingly needle-in-a-haystack search for the terrorist-kidnapers, strains within the organization, newly acquired by an international conglomerate, also reach the breaking point as the power-hungry, hard-as-nails, president of the network, Margot Lloyd-Mason, weighs human lives against the parent firm’s global financial interests and--as is usual with her--opts for the bottom line.

Flitting between New York and its suburbs and the steamy jungles of Peru, “The Evening News” is a fast-paced, hide-and-seek story as the CBA-TV news team finds itself fighting terrorists who are every bit as faceless as, and only slightly less treacherous than, the corporate villains undermining the team’s effort from within. A few loose ends are never quite resolved, but the climax in “The Evening News” is a dandy. The novel is a Literary Guild Main Selection.

What did poor old, much-maligned Hollywood do to deserve the barbed attention of Judith Rossner? In His Little Women (Summit Books: $19.95; 366 pp.), Rossner, probably best remembered for her moody exploration of self-destruction in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” turns a jaundiced eye on Tinsel Town as exemplified by producer Sam Pearlstein and his four daughters by three different wives as they vie for their easily distracted father’s attention.

But the focal point is the love-hate relationship between the two oldest daughters, the irreverent, rowdy and talented Louisa and Nell, a lawyer and her father’s favorite (when it occurs to him to have a favorite). At the heart of the matter is Louisa’s best-selling novel about a Hollywood producer, a book that triggers a libel suit that threatens the Pearlsteins’ fortunes and prompts Nell, via “His Little Women,” to write her own version of what really happened.

Alternately brittle and tongue-in-cheek, Rossner has many wise things to say about the offhandedness of love and family relationships in Hollywood; about the hedonism that surrounds the movie industry, and about the practice of law when the throats of the rich and famous are on the chopping block. Rossner’s novel is a Literary Guild Main Selection.

For an almost jarring change of pace--as far away from Hollywood, geographically, as you can get and even further away in casting--turn your attention to Ya Ding’s absorbing story of life during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, The Earth Sings, translated by Jon Rothschild (Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich: $21.95; 224 pp.). A best- seller in France, where the young Chinese novelist now lives, “The Earth Sings” is a slice of life in rural China as seen through the eyes of 9-year-old Liang, a bright little boy with infinite faith in his family and a beguiling acceptance of that family’s dedication to the harsh Communist doctrines laid out in Mao’s Little Red Book.

Ardent Communists themselves, Liang’s young parents are dispatched from Beijing to a primitive peasant village to “modernize” it--a neat trick, as the “old ways”--reverence for ancestors, superstitions and ceremonies--clash with Mao’s teachings. Rebelling, subtly, while at the same time appearing to conform, the villagers are hard nuts to crack and, as was apparently par for the course during the Cultural Revolution, Liang’s father ultimately falls from grace with the party leadership and is jailed.

When the father ultimately is freed, the family trudges on with even fewer possessions to even poorer villages, still spreading Mao’s word. It is a touching story of old and new beliefs clashing in an exercise of what history later demonstrated was a political tilting at windmills that was doomed from the beginning.

“Sweeping” is the first adjective that comes to mind with Michael Petersons’ A Time of War (Pocket Books Hardcover: $19.95; 580 pp.). This big novel, while going over ground that has become familiar--the Vietnam War--may have put that sad conflict into clearer perspective than most, if not all, of its predecessors.

This is the story of Bradley Marshall, a personal “ambassador” of beleaguered Lyndon B. Johnson, sent to Vietnam in ’67 and ’68 to find some graceful way out of that mess. What Marshall uncovers, alas, is what most of us now concede was the true horror of that war: treachery rampant among political factions within our own government and among hangers-on from the days of French rule; the cynical buying and selling of information and misinformation; the numbing lethargy of American officers become hardened to the task of sending their young wards into suicidal engagements that they know are suicidal.

Peterson’s story, which some reviewers have compared--and not inappropriately--to Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” and Herman Wouk’s “The Winds of War,” is a sprawling and compelling narrative that blends fiction with such real-life players of the era as L.B.J. and Gen. William Westmoreland. But as fiction alone, “A Time of War” is a blood-chilling adventure story.

As our protagonist, Marshall, finds himself the target of forces within Vietnam who know his mission and who know that only his elimination can assure continuation of the deadly, hypocritical, game of the no-win war. Locales range from the Oval Office through the jungle outposts of Khe Sanh to the squalor of Saigon’s Chinese quarters in this brilliant second effort by the author of 1983’s “The Immortal Dragon.”

In a popular fiction field that teeters on the brink of overkill in the international-intrigue department, it is refreshing to pick up a new work that reminds us of how it should be done. Enter Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Ultimatum (Random House: $21.95; 640 pp.).

What separates successful international intrigue from its imitators are the characters --living and breathing heroes and villains alike, with whom we instantly relate. The art of the craft, as Ludlum once again demonstrates, is not only the step-by-step progression of many characters but the delineation of each, so he remains indelibly etched in our memory even as the plot speeds on.

This, of course, is the third Bourne novel (“The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy” preceding it), and we pick up Prof. David Webb, staid and proper family man, comfortably ensconced in academia when, abruptly, he finds himself once more thrust into his old role in Vietnam and Hong Hong as the assassin Jason Bourne. It’s a wrenching return for a middle-aged university professor, but since the evil apparatus, Medusa, and his archenemy Carlos are hell-bent on one last extermination effort, it is a matter of pure survival--and are those now-aging muscles and reflexes up to the task?

“The Bourne Ultimatum” dances from Washington to the Caribbean to Europe and Russia, and in the pulse-tingling style that began so many years ago with “The Scarlatti Inheritance,” we are caught up irretrievably.