THESE BONES WERE MADE FOR DANCIN'

The author's hipper-than-thou heroine Leslie Wetzon (Murder: The Musical, 1993, etc.), still a Wall Street headhunter in partnership with frenetic Xenia Smith, and still involved with NYPD Detective Silvestri, faces a new challenge. Combinations, the show in which she'd danced 17 years ago, is being revived, with original cast, as an AIDS benefit, for two concert performances. Leslie and breezy choreographer Carlos, trying to round up the players, find singer Terri Matthews the only missing element. When a trunk containing human bones and a bullet is found in the basement of a Greenwich Village brownstone being renovated, Silvestri, working with forensic anthropologist Nina Wayne, is pretty sure the lost is found. Terri's onetime steady, actor Peter Koenig, in town for a new show, is upset by the newsas is Combinations author Medora Battle, whose co-author husband Roger, long dead, may have been involved with Terri. The mystery's solution is long in arriving, and flatfooted when it does. The reader, meanwhile, has been introduced to a parade of showbiz personalities, both real and fictional; taken to eateries all over town; shown a detailed catalogue of upscale finery; subjected to reams of trendy chatter; and let in on some ways and means of big-bucks headhunting. Fun for the Broadway obsessed; little payback for the puzzle fanand overextended for either.