WOMEN WHO WAIT
By
Why should an attorney' whose specialty is in the glamor junk, the cosmetic, perfume and couturier field, want to do legal work in a prison?"" Why indeed? Why does chic and ambitious Jessica Morgan spend so much volunteer time trying to get clemency for three women convicted of murdering their husbands? Could it be because she herself almost stabbed her ex-husband years ago? (Not appreciating her selfhood, he said infuriating things like ""You've forgotten what it's like to be a woman, Jessica."") Or could it be just so that author Bissell could have a convenient excuse to slap together a novel out of three ordinary, overheated little melodramas--offered in unusually clumsy flashbacks? There's suburban Barbara, who shot hubby when she uncovered his predilection for little girls--maybe even their own daughter; and Millicent Devoe, ""one of the biggest moneymakers Hollywood ever had,"" who ran down her fortune-hunting husband when he wanted her to have an abortion; and mousy Dora of the Bronx, who finally got fed up with her cartoon-like super-oaf and knifed him when he killed her pet bird. Ironically, under the ostensibly feminist angle here is a flurry of 1940-ish formula femininity: all these women, including Jeasica, are totally man-mad--behaving irrationally, hysterically, and impulsively. A woman wronged. . . ho-hum.