The Naked Heart

Briskin's 10th novel ( Dreams Are Not Enough ), a tale of romance and revenge set mostly in Paris during and after WW II, dishes up exciting action and steamy sex in ample plentitude to satisfy her fans' expectations. Betrayed to the Gestapo for Resistance activities, Gilberte de Permont's aristocratic parents are tortured before they are killed. Forced to witness her father's torture, Gilberte swears to him she will wreak revenge on the unknown informer. After being gang-raped repeatedly by the Nazis, Gilberte is eventually released into the custody of Field-Marshal Hocherer and unwillingly becomes his mistress. By the time the Allies liberate Paris, she has borne him a son. Forced to suffer abuse for ``collaborating,'' she is found starving in a hovel by her former schoolmate, Ann Blakely. Ann had been whisked out of Paris during the Occupation by Gilberte's handsome American cousin, undercover agent Quent, and the pair has fallen in love. But Gilberte marries Quent to achieve security, and the two women are set in a conflict that turns even more vengeful when Gilberte discov ers how Ann's father was implicated in the de Permonts' fate. By novel's end, Gilberte finds the fruits of revenge bit ter indeed, but after putting her characters through incredible turns of fate, the author somehow pulls out the happy ending requisite to this emotion-wrought genre. Major ad/promo. (May)