VIDA by Delacorta (Summit: $12.95). It was...

VIDA by Delacorta (Summit: $12.95). It was inevitable that the inscrutable Gorodish and his precocious partner Alba should forsake their punk Paris for the glitz and glamour of metaphysical El Lay. Having established their questionable relationship in “Diva,” an enigmatic mystery that was made into a dazzling film, the couple indulge themselves in just about every cliched Southern California life style, flavored with alfalfa sprouts and settings out of the novels of Raymond Chandler. Entree is provided by the adolescent Alba opening a detective agency and being hired by a pre-pubescent computer genius to find his world-famous father, an architect who named himself Marlowe Wrightson but is called Pharaoh because of his fondness for pyramids. It seems he has run off with our heroine of sorts, Vida, a mysterious, black Mafia hit woman and patron saint of jazz, to wreak vengeance on a bevy of pretentious local architects. The characters are cartoons and the plot an illogical morass, but the total is fun, with the architects deserving what they got.