ARTIST'S PROOF

Sid Shale, the hero of Cotler's new series, thinks he can find a peaceful retreat from his NYPD berth by retiring to Long Island to paint. It's a bad idea for three reasons. One: Cassie Brennan, a teenager who insists on modeling nude for him, gets her throat cut at restauranteur Misha Sharanov's neighboring house. Two: Seated Girl, one of Sid's best nude studies of Cassie, earns him the wrath of her grieving parents and the lasting interest of suspicious county cop Sgt. John Docherty; and it looks as if Texas heiress Tess Turkinton's plan to talk her daddy into buying it as a present for Misha to entice him into a new restaurant partnership is going to fall through—particularly once Ben Turkinton realizes that Misha may not want to hang up an oil painting of the girl who was killed in his bedroom. Three: A pencil sketch of Misha's place (including some telltale details) helps convince Docherty that Sid didn't kill Cassie himself—and gets him on the wrong side of Misha and his endless supply of Russian goons. Though never exactly convincing as a painter, Sid comes across more successfully as a slightly overwhelmed lover (of his ex-wife and dealer Lonnie Morgenstern, of Sharanov's alleged lover Olivia Cooper, and of Tess Turkinton) and a sharply observant detective. Only the lightweight villain, who seems too rabbity even to have gone up against a teenaged girl, is a disappointment. Bright, lightweight fare from a writer who can do much better (Prime Candidate, 1996, etc.).