SILENT WITNESS

Refreshingly low-key memoir by a crime-busting psychic. The narrative tack here is a bit odd: The story is told in the third person, taking Myer-Czetli's story only through the late 70's, and, throughout, she's called ``Nancy Anderson,'' married to ``John'' (no doubt coauthor Czetli, ``a free-lance journalist,'' is Myer-Czetli's second husband). Moreover, some details of the psychic's early life are, at least at first, particularly hard to swallow: Myer-Czetli tells how, as the young daughter of a State Department agricultural specialist in Chile, she conversed telepathically with an old gypsy and used her powers of mind to drive off a man-eating lion (``Flee to the mountains, she urged. Do not attack the villages''). But readers who scoff too much at these wonders will find themselves in the same position as the several Delaware cops, named by the authors, who doubted Myer-Czetli's abilities until they saw her in action. One narrative thread, in fact, involves her winning over the skeptical Det. Carl Williams, assigned by the superintendent of the Delaware State police (who'd heard about one of Myer-Czetli's earliest exploits, her locating of a drowned boy in Florida) to get her advice on an unsolved robbery that had left the victim in a coma. After Myer-Czetli accurately described the perpetrators as well as some stolen items, Williams took her abilities seriously and worked with her in solving other cases, including the sex-slaying of a young woman; the multiple stabbing of an old woman; a series of rapes, etc. Throughout, the psychic's story is humanized and given an attractive fragility by her successful attempt, after many miscarriages, to carry a baby to term, and by her oft-repeated uncertainties about the origin, extent, and meaning of her psychic powers. Unsensational, frank, and—despite its outlandish subject- -having the ring of truth. (Sixteen pages of photographs—not seen) (First serial to the National Enquirer)