Killer Cinderella

Mark Harvey, an assistant bank manager in the small English town of Fareham, has been voted ``chauvinist hate figure'' two years in a row by the Fareham Feminist Discussion Group, whose members include Maddie, his unfaithful wife, and her best friends. Harvey feels similarly maligned by his boss and neighbors and is happy only while building small models of soldiers and military equipment. When his wife intentionally destroys the grand prize crystal bowl he won for one of his models, Harvey, enraged, accidentally chokes her to death. In his efforts to cover up the crime, he must dress up as Maddie and finds that he makes a very attractive woman indeed, judging from the responses of many men and women. Ever more characters die in his presence under bizarre circumstances, and Harvey soon becomes more comfortable as Maddie than as the nerdy, pig-headed chap who used to be her husband. Shaw, author of Murder Out of Tune , offers a plausible mystery with many hilarious, satiric moments. The mystery was named a 1990 Book of the Year by London's Financial Times . (Jan.)