DEATH AND FAXES

Can't go home again? Let's just say that planning to return to your childhood hometown with your husband, only to have him reassigned at the last minute to the Philippines for the year, isn't the best way to do it. Greeting-card artist Molly Masters copes as best she can with the backbiting among her former high- school friends, the subtle digs about her absent husband, the oh- so-polite note from the teacher she attacked in a poem printed in the high-school newspaper way back when, and the faxed threats accusing her of having ruined Phoebe Kravett's life with that poem. But when Mrs. Kravett dies before Molly can respond to her note, and her death turns out to be murder—well, Molly's only two choices are to crawl into a deep hole, especially after an abortive party at her house is followed by a second killing, or to turn detective. The result is a '90s mix of Agatha Christie (the cast includes a secret gambler and a kleptomaniac) and Mary Roberts Rinehart (``I think I know who the killer was. But I still don't have any proof, so I don't want to say just yet''), laced with a stream of Molly's winsome greeting-card concepts and a cast that seems incapable of outgrowing high-school follies. A middling new entry in the crowded field of gamely facetious suburban moms.