Chinese Checkers

When Karen Matthews, a ""meek and mild dental student from Santa Monica,"" agrees to attend the wedding of an ex-girlfriend of her husband, Tom, she has no idea what she's getting into. In the ladies' room, she overhears Tom and the bride-to-be having a distressingly intimate conversation-and Doumani's second thriller (after UNTITLED, Nude, 1995) is off and running. ""Within the space of 20 minutes,"" Karen observes, ""I'd found out my husband had a mistress, a gun and the vocabulary of a longshoreman."" Tom, it turns out, isn't the straight-arrow insurance executive Karen had thought. He's a deep-cover CIA operative who's suddenly sent on a secret mission to Hong Kong and China. Plucky Karen goes after her man, launching a high-spirited, if implausible, chase complete with stereotypically nasty villains, brutish thugs and occasional tips on dental hygiene (green tea leaves ease toothache; chewing gum makes a good temporary filling). Narrated by the chatty Karen, the plot moves briskly, zigzagging from one cliffhanger to the next at predictable intervals. While her first novel made efficient use of the art world of Venice, Calif., the author's native milieu, here potentially exotic settings languish, caught in cliches. Hong Kong is reduced to a tritely familiar ""jungle of neon lights"" where people eat strange food and listen to ""twangy music.'' Ultimately, this conventionally melodramatic adventure demands little from readers other than an ability to suspend disbelief and to settle in for a long and bumpy ride. Audio rights to Books on Tape. (June)