Palace of Mirrors

Take just about every prime-time TV cliche, from Superwoman to Dynasty, coat it with the nasal unction of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, drop a few brand names like Porsche and Pratesi, and you'll get the gist of this expose of vice and venality in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach. Beautiful Palm Beach heiress Brett Farrell had left Florida, a handsome fiance and an assured future 10 years earlier for the jungles of Vietnam where she began a career as a photojournalist. Her documentaries on the atrocities of war there and in South America and Iran earned her a Pulitzer Prize but also burned her out: ""After a while these revolutionary shoot-outs begin to get confusing.'' Returning to Palm Beach, she takes up again with her old fiance, now a successful surgeon and still single, and befriends Julia DuShane, a dying society doyenne who wants Brett to find the children she abandoned in Cuba four decades ago. Amid plot complications that include incest, the un-Hippocratic practice of medicine, drug trafficking and organized crime, Brett discovers that one of Julia's children is a criminally insane faith healer, and another is a fanatic and handsome revolutionary hero violently opposed to Castro's regime. Will Brett succumb to the seductions of her earlier life of ease and security, or will she opt for danger, risk, glory and, above all, passion? Only TV-drugged readers will care. (September 30)