A WOMAN RUN MAD <i> by John L’Heureux (Avon Books: $3.95) </i>

Quinn is presumably at work on his fiction (he’s had short stories published in The New Yorker) in his Boston apartment, and sees his wife, Claire (a professor at Williams College), only on weekends.

It is Quinn’s natural curiosity, his penchant for snooping (living proof, in Claire’s view, that he is a born novelist) that inspires him to follow home a well-heeled woman he has seen shoplift a purse at Bonwit Teller. After “the Criminal WASP from Beacon Hill” gets in her front door, Quinn turns around to find that he’s been followed as well by a man in a gray suit--who propositions him sexually.

“Shoplifter” is actually a sanguine description of Sarah Slade: She has previously killed and mutilated a lover but never served time because she pleaded temporary insanity. The gray-suited man, Angelo, is the brother-in-law and lover of Sarah’s brother, Porter, and also Sarah’s protector.

Sarah and Quinn will become involved, and Sarah’s story will evolve into Quinn’s novel.

“Normality . . . and monstrosity are L’Heureux’s poles, and he joins them with extraordinary dexterity,” Richard Eder wrote in his review. “The ending is not to be revealed, other than to say that it is bloody and grotesque and that normality and monstrosity become utterly indistinguishable.”