THE TROUBLE WITH A BAD FIT

Looks like designer Roberta Riddle's comeback collection for Riddle Solutions has a bumpy road to travel before it reaches the spring/summer show in Bryant Park. Somebody's Krazy-Glued the restroom door locks at Roberta's Seventh Avenue offices and made her presents of dead roaches and stabbed rats. And now her fitting model, Phyllis Striker, has been brained on the premises by Roberta's own jade Buddha—and the cops have picked Roberta's new partner, Charlie Angelo, as the #1 suspect. So Roberta offers a $5,000 bonus to ad designer Simona Griffo if Simona, who spends more time detecting than laying out double-page spreads anyway, will exonerate Charlie by getting the real killer. She'd think twice if she knew that the path to the killer will not only take Simona (at odds as usual with her NYPD roommate Stan Greenhouse) through a maze of fashion-maven zanies—from Riddle sample-maker Flossie Sarnowski and her son Jerry, whose keenest eye is for the horses, to lingerie designer Ernest Gold, a.k.a. Mr. Nite; she'll end up turning an awfully inquisitive eye on a fatal accident that bound Phyllis to Roberta nearly 30 years ago, and getting mugged twice and treated to a broken leg even before the final confrontation with the killer. Sprightly, sunny, and gossipy: a welcome return to form after the ill-advised introversion of The Trouble with Going Home (1995). An appendix gives a brief history of the New York fashion industry and a lasagna recipe that'll make it harder to fit into any of those clothes. (Author tour)