Female Superior Position

Carolyn Steele, sex columnist for Playhouse magazine, appears as an ``Easily Orgasmic Woman'' on the Olive Whitney talk show. When Elizabeth Thatcher, her antagonist and spokesperson for Women Worried About Wantonness Among Women, nearly chokes her on-air, Carolyn atttains instant high-profile notoriety--and increased visibility as a target for the unknown assailant who is threatening--and sometimes killing--women in porn. Dubbed the ``Superlady of Sex'' (even though she's been chaste for seven months), Carolyn endures such indignities as hate mail, stink bombs and paint thrown on her fur coat as she sets about reviving her sex life with a fanciful array of partners and practices. Suspecting a recently fired Playhouse staffer, a lesbian transsexual bodybuilder, as the killer, Carolyn and her feminist porn-purveying cohorts follow a trail marked by panty-sniffing, penis-piercing and other preoccupations to ferret out the unsurprising villain. With occasional cleverness and encyclopedic coverage of sexual mores, Bakos devotes more attention here to depicting graphic sex than to telling a story. (June)