BOOK REVIEW : Tale of Girl’s Slaying in 1985 Is Elevated to the Level of Myth : “MISSY’S MURDER” <i> by Karen Kingsbury</i> ; Dell Books $4.99, 390 pages

The story of the death of Missy Avila, a pretty, vivacious 17-year-old girl who was savagely beaten and drowned by blindly jealous friends, is one of inherent tension and ironic drama.

Fiercely loyal to her friends, Missy failed to recognize obvious signs of the seething anger they felt toward her. Not only was she more attractive, she was more popular, and the friends feared losing their boyfriends to her. Their thoughts muddled by alcohol and cocaine, and their emotions twisted by rage, Karen Severson and Laura Doyle lured her into the San Gabriel Mountains in October, 1985, and killed her.

Then, seeking to turn suspicion away from herself, Severson moved in with the Avila family, in a bold and cynical attempt to, in a sense, become Missy. She repeatedly vowed to not rest until the killer or killers were found and concocted numerous theories about who might have been responsible.

Such a story is perfectly suited to the increasingly popular genre of true-crime, in which writers take tragic facts and fit them into a simplistic formula of good and evil. Forced to take a point of view, authors of such books usually make a monster out of the killer and a saint out of the victim, and Karen Kingsbury’s new account of Avila’s death does so with a missionary’s fervor.

In “Missy’s Murder,” whose cover blurb promises “passion, betrayal, and murder in Southern California,” a sad and tawdry tale of death is elevated to the level of myth.

Missy was the princess, the Snow White of Arleta, who loved her mother dearly and dreamed on clear, sunny days of climbing to a ridge top to “find the perfect rock and write poetry” about the Prince Charming she knew would come. Incapable of suspicion, she stuck by Severson, her best friend since childhood, even though Severson repeatedly betrayed her to her other friends.

Severson, on the other hand, is portrayed as evil incarnate, the adopted child whose soul was soured by her abandonment. She is described as ugly, fat and vindictive, as well as promiscuous, manipulative and vicious.

To be published this month in paperback by Dell Books (390 pages, $4.99), the book will no doubt sell well on the basis of its sensational subject matter and title.

But many readers will probably be disappointed by Kingsbury’s clumsy retelling of the highly publicized killing, investigation and trial. Repetitive and florid, the book relies on sweeping generalizations such as “Los Angeles was the kind of county that reeked of homicide.” Rather than letting the story tell itself, Kingsbury’s heavy-handed prose constantly tells the reader why events or facial expressions are significant, even when their importance is obvious.

Equally awkward is her attempt to make the killing exemplify the San Fernando Valley as a paradise lost. Kingsbury’s quick sketch of the Valley’s history, and how it became part of the city of Los Angeles, is completely muddled. She says the water from the “nearby” Owens Valley, which she fails to mention is at the northern end of a 233-mile-long aqueduct, helped the city grow.

Then she says that although Valley leaders have considered seceding from Los Angeles, the city would never allow it because it would mean the loss of water rights and the loss “of control of the aqueducts which weave through the Valley floor like so many concrete arteries.” Kingsbury may be confusing the Valley’s flood control channels with aqueducts.

Although such books require authors to reconstruct conversations and emotions, Kingsbury takes the technique too far. For example, when Severson leads some of Missy’s friends and family members back to the scene of her death, purportedly to look for clues, Kingsbury uses it as one more opportunity to characterize her as the epitome of evil.

“Karen looked at the others, absorbing their fear and shock. You’re all so stupid, she must have thought to herself, just as stupid as Missy. “ The reader is never told the basis for this and other speculation, even when it seems to contradict the admiration Severson had toward her victim, which is repeatedly expressed.

Another aspect of the book that gets in the way is its reliance on the annoying narrative device of short chapters in which no names are used. One chapter, just after news of the death is relayed to Avila’s family, has this passage:

“She was dead and now it was just a matter of getting off the mountain and away from the scene.

“The car picked up speed and then suddenly the driver hit the brakes.

“ ‘Wait, maybe she’s not dead!’ The driver turned suddenly and stared at the passenger. ‘We should go back.’

“But the passenger said no.”

Rather than heightening suspense, passages such as this, in which the participants are not named, confuse the reader and merely slow down the story. Such chapters are used to add suspense, but because it is often unclear who is talking or thinking, the device doesn’t work.

Late in the book, it turns out that most of those chapters reflect the thoughts of the passenger, a girl who joined Severson and Doyle in the mountains that day with Missy. After struggling with nightmares and guilt for three years, the girl finally goes to police with her story. And that is the break that investigators need to charge Severson and Doyle with a crime.

Because the girl, whose name is changed in the book, left the scene of the killing when Missy was still alive, she was unable to provide the details of exactly who committed the crime. As a result, the two girls were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced last year to serve 15 years to life in prison.

Kingsbury, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News who covered the trial for the paper, is most sure of herself when she is describing events in the courtroom. She does an adequate job of describing the difficult task the prosecutor had because she lacked an eyewitness to the crime and because Doyle and Severson refused to testify. (Kingsbury currently free-lances for The Times and other publications.)

The story Kingsbury attempts to tell in her first book has impact despite her amateurish handling of it. One comes to the end of the book, however, wishing that it had been written by a more experienced hand.