Sin

Fans of Hart's bestselling Damage will undoubtedly flock to the bookstores to snatch up her second novel, but they may be disappointed by this one, which essentially marks her as a one-note writer. Again there is an insistent yet oblique narrative voice; this time it belongs to Ruth, who is insanely envious of her cousin/sister Elizabeth, adopted by Ruth's parents when her own family died in an accident. Calling herself a ``malevolent creature,'' Ruth realizes that her desire to destroy kind, generous Elizabeth is the expression of a warped psyche. When she succeeds in seducing Elizabeth's husband, Sir Charles, Ruth exults in their lasciviously detailed red-hot sex, but after he repudiates her, she experiences terrible pain. The staccato sentences that successfully propelled Damage are here reduced to fragments so truncated they cry out for parody; elsewhere, Hart's prose is terminally overwrought: ``Ferocity had etched something high, cold and silver onto my face.'' Readers will discern a pattern in Hart's plot technique: obsession leads to evil, betrayal and lust, then to painfully ironic complications and eventually to tragic, symbolic retribution. The trouble this time around is that the melodrama palls and the frisson of suspense is lacking. 100,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. (Aug. )