FACE VALUE

Where on earth does Laura di Palma (``my primary areas of specialty are bankruptcy and corporate litigation'') get the weird criminal clients who keep her in business? After her high-powered San Francisco law firm lets her go, Laura (A Hard Bargain, 1992, etc.) finds herself with two unlikely clients in rapid succession: Margaret Lenin, another corporate lawyer who talks about suing her spiritual guru, Brother Mike, for computer-altering the sex-therapy free-for- alls she'd participated in and for putting the altered videotapes up for sale; and then, after Margaret backs down, Brother Mike himself, who arranges through Laura's old law-school classmate Gretchen Miller to hire Laura to defend a similar suit threatened by exotic dancer Arabella de Janeiro. Before she can sign a contract with Brother Mike, though, Laura makes two trips to Arabella's workplace, The Back Door, with searing results: first, a memorable trip through a hellish First Amendment rally, then a chilling confrontation with six dead strippers. And Brother Mike's behavior—when she catches up with him on a private island off the Washington coast—is just as bizarre: he offers unsolicited sexual advice to her and disappears moments after he's asked her to release him from the handcuffs a new follower clapped him in. Matera's look at the dehumanizing power of sexual manipulation- -the computer re-imaging plot here cuts much deeper than the gimmickry of Rising Sun—is so unblinking that you'll look right past the story's coincidences in your hurry to get to the hair-raising finale.