Prime Time

This first novelist is a better actress. But Collins has at least followed one of the basic rules for the fiction ingenue: write about something you know. Her milieu is Hollywood in the 1980s, where five actresses are testing for the ``greatest goddamn woman's role since Scarlett O'Hara.'' The coveted part is that of Miranda, the glamorous, voluptuous, bitchy ex-wife of a business tycoon in a TV series resembling Dynasty. Top contender is beautiful Chloe Carriere, a British songstress married (and faithful) to an aging rock star with a penchant for young girls. She harbors a carefully guarded secretan illegitimate love child whom she dotes on, but who knows her as Aunt Chloe. Generating only tepid suspense with this soap-opera staple, Collins is equally inept with a second element of attempted intrigue: a disturbed young man so obsessed by another actress vying for the prized part that he plots to kill the ``sluts'' who are competing for the role. While Collins's experiences enhance the various Hollywood settings with a good blend of glitz and gossip, her writing is pedestrian, her plotting obvious and her dialogue cliche-ridden and trite. First s erial to Cosmopolitan; Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild alternate. (October)