Sweet Charity and the Bingo Bust : GOD BLESS THE CHILD, By James Colbert (Atheneum: $22; 256 pp.)

If politics makes weird bedfellows, altruism makes even weirder alliances. Consider Sue Hathorn and Robert Malone of Jackson, Miss., for instance. Hathorn is a good, middle-aged Baptist woman who probably never had a sinful thought in her life. And, lord have mercy, she would never drink, smoke or gamble. Actually, two out of three isn’t bad. Because Sue Hathorn did gamble on gambler Robert Malone, a good old boy with shady connections, a fancy pickup truck and a fondness for heavy gold jewelry. Naturally, the tie that binds the two is money.

In January, 1990, Hathorn was the driving force behind the Mississippi Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, a charity designed to supplement the meager resources devoted to child abuse by the state’s government. To fund the committee, Hathorn tacked together paltry grants and collected aluminum cans for recycling--a truly hand-to-mouth operation. But one day Hathorn learned that bingo games in bingo-mad Mississippi had to make donations to charities in order to remain legal. She contacted Malone, who operated the thriving Bingo Depot. He agreed to give Hathorn’s nonprofit $6,000. On the night of Jan. 6, Hathorn, feeling slightly soiled by the process, picked up the check at the Bingo Depot. Four days later, under the direction of the state’s attorney general, police raided the bingo operation and shut it down.

God-fearing Sue Hathorn was shocked when she read the news. She was even more shocked to learn that Bingo Depot netted an estimated $1 million a year. She had gotten a pittance. Yet in these dreary, embarrassing circumstances, Hathorn heard opportunity knocking. Taking the biggest risk of her life, Hathorn became a supporter of Malone, even though it meant pitting herself against the state’s young and popular attorney general, Mike Moore.

How Hathorn and Malone ultimately triumphed over the forces of the state is both a comedy and a drama. Essentially, the upright lady and the unsavory bingo czar hoist Moore on the petard of hypocrisy. Why did the ambitious Moore single out Malone’s operation while letting bingo flourish everywhere else in the state? Suffice it to say, the state supreme court thought it was a darn good question.

“God Bless the Child”’ is a big departure for James Colbert, best known for his New Orleans thrillers such as “Profit and Sheen.” His first stab at nonfiction is a complete success. The narrative is a masterful sketch of low politics, high ideals and the unshakable will of Sue Hathorn. Moreover, Colbert has skillfully blended the saga of Hathorn and Malone with glimpses of Mississippi’s child-welfare system and the bleak, harrowing lives of the state’s abused sons and daughters.

Best of all, though, is the surprise ending. Some good deeds not only go unpunished--they are rewarded. It’s stunning enough to silence a hundred yapping cynics.