Wish-Bone

As a teenager, novelist Mabel Fleish fell in love with Beauregard Barbon, a weak 16-year-old who, until his mysterious suicide, spent his spare time mutilating small animals and studying to be a warlock. Mabel is so obsessed with Beau's memory that, as an adult, she carried him into fictional manhood in her first novel, Bone-about a woman involved in a sadomasochistic affair with a ``demonic character'' based on the beloved Beau. As this novel opens, it's 20 years later, and Mabel-married and living in a N.Y. college town-receives a threatening letter from someone she believes is the long-dead Beau. Golub's (Secret Correspondences) tedious tale turns repellent as Mabel is kidnapped by a former lover who claims she stole his-not Beau's-life for Bone. Hauling Mabel off to a mountain hut, he strings her up in a harness and hood and takes his revenge with tortures that include a saddle and the rendition of some Edgar Allen Poe. Meanwhile, Mabel's professor husband, Percival Furnival, and his aging colleague, Rufus Wutzl, mount a hunt for the missing object of both their affections. And albino reporter and obituary writer Herm Kwestral thinks he's hot on the trail of the possibly non-deceased Beau. Home alone, Mabel's 11-year-old daughter Ana enjoys acting out sexual dominance fantasies with Ken and Barbie. Annoying rather than successfully satirical, Golub's attempts at a black-humored mystery consistently misfire. (Feb.)