HEADING UPTOWN

Forget Roger Simon. Forget Faye Kellerman. The ultimate Jewish mystery has to be this funny, smart-mouthed, hardcover introduction to Nina Fischman, a New York City lawyer who, here, has been named executor of the estate of one of her mother's friends. The late Helen's daughter-in-law Beverly wants just a few dishes, but Beverly's daughter—the sassy, wise-beyond-her-years Lisa—asks Nina to discover what happened to her dad, Mark, who skipped town a few months ago, then turned up a drunk-driving fatality in Lake Placid. But how could that be when Mark was a diabetic and never drank? Did Beverly want him dead so that she could marry Stuart, one of Mark's clients? Did one of Mark's partners kill him to exercise a death clause that would get them out of their office lease (the business, a mortgage-lending enterprise, was going bankrupt). Assisted by an old boyfriend, Nina scrutinizes the accident/autopsy reports, then returns to canvass N.Y.C. and environs for suspects and motives. A too-glib confession follows- -which subtracts from the exuberance and originality of the rest of the story but still doesn't manage to sink it. It's hard to resist an author who has an opinion on everything, with each one funnier than the last. Now, if only Piesman would tighten up her endings....