BOOK REVIEW : THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR <i> by Rafael Yglesias</i> ; Crown $19.95; 282 pages : Adoption, a Killing, a Life in Ruins

A bizarre court case was recently written up in which a transvestite man was indicted for the murder of his wife but retained legal custody of their young daughter. In “The Murderer Next Door,” Rafael Yglesias has recast the story as fiction.

Penetrating the disordered mind of the accused would be difficult enough, but the author has compounded the challenge by using a female voice throughout--the victim’s closest friend. The first person narrator is Molly Gray, a Maine lobsterman’s daughter, who was virtually adopted at the age of 8 by a summer visitor impressed with the child’s beauty and precocious intelligence.

Unstintingly loved, cared for and educated by Naomi Perlman, who transported her from a squalid house trailer to the warmth of a sophisticated Manhattan milieu, Molly willingly relinquishes her own bleak heritage and devotes herself to fulfilling Naomi’s expectations for her.

By the mid-1970s, Molly is already established as a lawyer. The rigorous journey from grim past to successful present has provided her with an assortment of colleagues, acquaintances and admirers but no close friends until she meets Wendy Sonnenfeld at a Soho loft party. The gap in Molly’s life closes instantly, and from that night on, the two young women are inseparable.

Wendy is trusting, undirected and artistic, while Molly is skeptical, driven and purposeful. The friendship becomes a mutual benefit society of two, giving the dilettantish Wendy direction, and thawing Molly’s austerity.

Within a short time, Molly meets and marries a sweetly undemanding psychiatrist. Yearning for a husband and family of her own, Wendy precipitously follows suit, settling for the physically gross and domineering stockbroker Ben Fliess. Though Molly’s gentle husband Stefan clearly doesn’t care for Ben’s blustery coarseness, he offers only token resistance when Wendy and Ben buy an adjoining apartment. Childless herself, Molly is enchanted when Wendy and Ben make her the godmother of their baby daughter and name the child Naomi in memory of Molly’s benefactor.

The narrator’s tranquil marriage forms a bland background for the volatile relationship of Wendy and Ben Fliess. As time goes on, Ben becomes increasingly abrasive, abusive and irascible, humiliating his wife in public and frequently abandoning his family for days at a time. One evening when the child is still an infant, Molly glimpses Ben in the apartment laundry room, dressed in womens’ underwear. Her free-floating anxiety for her friend turns to specific, acute fear for her safety and that of the baby.

Her curiosity leads her to Ben’s old bachelor apartment, which he has never given up and now apparently uses for his clandestine trysts. Despite grave misgivings, Molly tells Wendy of these discoveries. Like any good psychiatrist’s wife, Molly naively believes that Ben could be helped by therapy and would agree to seek it once his secret was known. The Fliess family then leaves for their country house, and when Ben and the child eventually return, Molly learns that her friend has been brutally murdered, the bludgeoned body found in a dumpster.

The appalling facts are delivered in the same controlled tone in which we’ve learned Molly Gray’s own history--the precise, neutral voice of a well-schooled lawyer. Once the murder is revealed and Ben is indicted, Molly begins to lose that equilibrium. Ben is released on bail and permitted to take charge of his daughter.

At that point, Molly’s interest in the child’s welfare becomes an all-consuming passion, driving her to ever more reckless acts. Telling herself that she must stay close to her godchild in order to protect her, Molly becomes deeply involved with Ben Fliess, straining her own marriage to the breaking point. Though she insists she’s disgusted by Ben, her revulsion is actually fascination, which in turn becomes aberrant obsession.

By the time this complex story ends, the careful structure of Molly Gray’s life is in ruins; the rational self she has assembled reduced to fragments. After a measured beginning, “The Murderer Next Door” becomes a chillingly plausible psychodrama, a headlong plunge into the whirlpool of the narrator’s emotions.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “The Best of Plimpton” by George Plimpton (Atlantic Monthly Press).