POSSESSIONS

Possessions ($27.50; Feb. 26; 256 pp.; 0-231-10998-9): A sequel to the celebrated French critic and semiotician's eerie allegorical novel The Old Man and the Wolves (1994, not reviewed) fuses a neatly constructed murder mystery with a series of brief meditations on linguistic and philosophical topics that will be familiar to readers of Kristeva's nonfiction. Though the whole enterprise seems just a tad self-indulgent (if not self-important), it must be said that journalist Stephanie Delacour, who unofficially investigates the grisly murder of a close friend, displays a beguiling savoir-faire, and that the parade of suspects she encounters, including a pompous psychiatrist, a bad-tempered maid, and a guilt-ridden lover, whose ``confession'' doesn't fit the facts of the case, give this occasionally overburdened intellectual jeu some of the welcome specificity of a down-to-earth old-fashioned whodunit.