Free Love

Olivia Brown, the heroine of this launch of a new series from the author of the Smith and Wetzon novels (The Big Killing, etc.), is the ""it"" girl of 1920s Greenwich Village. ""Inspired,"" as the galley copy reads, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Olivia is cultivating a reputation as a bohemian poetess and a ravishing ""good-time girl,"" with puppy-eyed artists and writers proposing marriage to her at every turn. But Olivia is staunch in her commitment to her heart and to her free-spirited lifestyle (""Stop, Edward. You know I love you, in my way. But it is I who would be morally dishonest if we stayed together""). Besides, she's preoccupied with discovering who among her devoted circle may be stalking her, and whether that stalker is responsible for murdering her ""doppelg nger""--a transvestite made up to resemble Olivia, found in a soggy courtyard outside a popular speakeasy, his throat carefully slashed. When the police start asking Olivia impertinent questions, she turns to her tenant Harry Melville, a boozy PI with underworld connections and a limited vocabulary (""Bloody hell!""). Then Harry is attacked, presumably by the stalker, leaving the intrepid poet on her own to solve the apparently related crimes and to write her solipsistic, seemingly unironic poetry (""Abandon mind? There's no rebate/But death, who'll take us in mid-dance""). Meyers deftly evokes Prohibition Era Greenwich Village, a jittery, gin-soaked place infested with ""romantic fever."" But with its silly plot, interchangeable characters and pretentious dialogue, this series opener is as lightweight as the heroine's flapper physique. Agent, Stuart Krichevsky. Mystery Guild featured alternate; 3-city author tour. (Oct.)