The Total Zone

Not content with having delivered her own outspoken memoir, the tennis ace now ventures into the mystery field, with novelist Nickles's help. It's a workmanlike story, involving the mysterious disappearance of a teenage tennis whiz, the strange behavior of her horribly pushy parents and the efforts of heroine Jordan Myles, tennis veteran turned physical therapist, to find her. But the key element is the authenticity of the tennis background, shifting from Forest Hills to Wimbledon, with excursions to a racquet expert in Florida, a sports physique center in California and Madison Square Garden. Navratilova offers absorbing asides on life on the tennis circuit, the customizing of racquets and the game's sometimes weird ``groupies.'' She even gets to create a perfect image of herself as a cool Russian-born dynamo called Mariska Storrs, who repels a stream of young challengers to her crown. Tennis buffs will lap it up, but mystery aficionados may feel that Myles, despite her pluck and her adorable dog (named after the legendary Alice Marble), is not sufficiently colorful or perceptive to become a competitive series sleuth. (Aug.)