THE BLUEJAY SHAMAN

When her sexist brother-in-law, anthropology professor Wade Fraser, is jailed for killing spiritual counselor Shiloh Doris, Jackson (Wyo.) art historian Alix Thorssen puts her FBI consulting on hold to help her sister Melina. The evidence against Wade is bad medicine: He'd quarreled loudly and publicly with Shiloh, the local contact for a women's group called the Manitou Matrix, over a recent outbreak of vandalism on the Salish reservation (Manitou head Orianna Gold Flicker had finally ordered a group of followers to sit on him), and ten years earlier he was charged with assaulting Marcus Tilden, his chair at the university. Since then Tilden has gone on to earn the nickname ``Mad Dog'' by leading his female groupies in orgiastic dances as the Bluejay Shaman, half- man, half-bird. How is this weird behavior tied in to the bluejay pictograph both Shiloh and wealthy Oklahoma collector Charlotte Vardis were looking for before they were killed? Mad Dog is a piece of work, all right, but the rest of newcomer McClendon's low-profile cast, from heroine to killer, are no more substantial than tribal spirits as they run through their obligatory scenes. For regional specialists only.