MULTIPLE WOUNDS

The leading witnesses (or are they the leading suspects?) to gallery owner Bonnie Gill's murder are the weirdest bunch that veteran San Diego cop Orson Cheever has ever interviewed—and they're all living inside the self of Bonnie's client, sculptor Holly Troy. Holly, christened Helen Troy by her classicist father, has disassociative identity disorder, and Cheever has his hands full just juggling her multiple personalities: passive Holly, childlike Caitlin, angry male Cronos, sexy Eris, melancholy Eurydice, painfully empathic Hygeia, vengeful Nemesis, the wildly energetic Maenads, the intuitive Moirae, and Pandora, the gatekeeper and guide to all the others. (In one virtuoso scene, Cheever takes Holly out to lunch and watches as she orders, in rapid succession, an albacore melt, a rare steak, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, lamb salad, chicken fajitas, and artichoke heart pizza.) Clearly Holly has armored herself with this impressive roster of alters in response to a harrowing trauma, and it's no criticism of Russell to say that just as the other suspects, with only one personality apiece, can't hope to compete with Holly's brilliantly evoked Greek Chorus, her troubled past steals the limelight from Bonnie's present-day murder. A tour de force less reminiscent of Russell's recent pair of farces about mayhem at the Hotel California than of his dark debut novel, No Sign of Murder (1991).