A LOVE TO DIE FOR

From time to time Jane Smith has had funny visions, but that's not why she's chucked her job as an accountant and persuaded the editor of the Denver Daily Orion (a weekly) to take her on as ``stars and garters'' columnist Stella the Stargazer. It's just that Jane—sorry, Stella—craves novelty and excitement, and in no time at all, she has her fill. Only a few days after she advises her very first correspondent, ``Looking for Lochinvar,'' to launch a decisive pursuit of her ``love to die for,'' Stella discovers the body of lingerie-maker Grace Peary in her shop, Sweet Nothings, and soon realizes that she was looking for Lochinvar, and presumably found him. Stella feels guiltily certain that she's to blame for Grace's murder—a feeling Det. Lee Stokowski seconds in a legal sense when Grace's body disappears before anybody but Stella has seen it (was it just one of those visions?), then reappears on the shore of Coal Creek, which Stella can describe without ever having seen. (Another vision, huh? Well, just wait till Stokowski finds Stella on the scene of a second murder.) Though Stella's convinced she can identify Lochinvar, can she gather enough evidence against him to keep Stokowski from pulling her in? Jorgensen endows her heroine with a combination of savvy and foolishness that makes her just right for this promising debut.