The Bette Davis Murder Case

Readers may have to be fastened in their seats for this bumpy read as Baxt (The Marlene Dietrich Murder Case) resurrects another Hollywood celebrity for an encounter with murder. Between ferocious puffs on her cigarette, a tempestuous Bette is in London, playing an unaccustomed supporting role as she helps Agatha Christie, married here to archeologist Max Mallowan, solve a series of murders. Former nurse Agatha suspects that her neighbor Virgil Wynn, also an archeologist, is being slowly poisoned. Bette has been introduced to the Wynns by a spiritualist she met while sailing to London, where she's to act in a film while fighting studio chief Jack Warner and shedding her bandleader husband. Overplotted, undercharacterized and longer on movie lore than logic, this tale is a waste of its readers' brain cells. (Aug.)