DEAD AS A DOORNAIL

Moneyed ex-hairdresser Stan Kraychik, who's now added ex-cop-in-training to his rÇsumÇ (despite his sharpshooting prowess, he's officially on a leave of absence from the Boston police academy and knows that the homophobia he's seen on the force will keep him from returning), has started rehabbing a South End brownstone. With the help of his dishy rookie contractor, Tim Shaughnessy, Stan dreams of opening a guesthouse that'll revitalize the neighborhood. But the project is brought to a halt as abruptly as is Tim, whom Stan finds lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Accident, says Lt. Vito Branco. Murder, retorts Stan, whose next brain wave is that the killer must be one of his neighbors on Tremont Street. Sure enough, Tim's girlfriend Angie; his landlady, buff realtor Salena Hightower; Salena's husband, kitchen-techseller Thorin Hightower; Waspish retro tableware maven Myron Kratz; and Chip Holton, the Adonis of the South End Kinesiological Society (SEKS), are all connected to Tim—the last three as closely as biology and commerce can bring them—though it takes endless rounds of Tremont Street, and a spot of illegal eavesdropping on Branco's interrogation tapes, to put Stan on the track of a well-nigh invisible clue. Jokey, flighty, featherweight, and a notch below Time to Check Out (1996): not for any except devotees of malicious pansexual gossip.