BODIES

Scotland Yard's Supt. Perry Trethowan (Death and the Princess) in another of the author's unfailingly entertaining forays into crime. This time the scene is London's Soho and the seedy premises of Bodies magazine, where photographer Bob ""salt-of-the-earth"" Cordle, his young apprentice and two nude models have been shot to death for no obvious reason. Bodies, as its pudgy editor Phil Fennilow expounds, is a family mag concentrating on the healthy body, with no pornographic overtones, and so Trethowan is soon deep into the narcissistic world of muscle freaks, health nuts and bodybuilding championships. One of his leads is to star muscle-man Denzil Crabtree, whose unsullied purity has been tainted by big money from over-the-hill model Vince Haggerty, now into making porn flicks, and once innocently aided by the late Bob Cordle. Along the way, Trethowan gets crucial help from cool, black, brainy Charlie, manager of Jim's gym, whose efforts uncover the evidence that puts the Supt. on target. Narrated by Trethowan in seemingly effortless conventional style, Barnard's eye and ear find the humor, the hypocrisy and the pathos in every little world he explores. Bodies is no exception.