SHINGLES <i> by Thomas Carl Thomsen (Cross River Press: $17.95) </i>

Thanks to an odd (and, for the author, unfortunate) set of circumstances, there now exists a refreshingly clear and accessible book on a subject few of us think about: shingles, a disease that, according to Thomas Thomsen, will afflict one in five people in the course of a 70-year lifetime.

To Thomsen’s bad luck, he came down with the painful disorder, a virus related to chicken pox, in 1986. The other 1.2 million people who suffer an attack every year will benefit from his suffering. Thomsen, who spent the first 40 years of his professional life writing PR and advertising copy, did extensive research, devised a perfectly practical structure for his material, and then wrote about what he had learned in a fluid, conversational style. Only occasionally does he slip into glibness and gloss over a clearly crucial point, as in one reference to the difficulty of dealing with protracted pain, where he writes: “In some cases, suicide is a viable alternative (sic) to continuation of a condition that offers little if any prospect of correction. Family support is absolutely essential to preclude this conclusion.” Indeed, Mr. Thomsen.