Mysteries

Anyone harboring regrets about not getting into Harvard will feel better after reading “The Student Body” (Villard Books). The slick page turner was written by “Jane Harvard,” a pseudonym for four Harvard graduates who collaborated on the book to pay off their student loans. Set on the most prestigious campus in the nation, the intricate and in-your-face smart plot revolves around junior Toni Isaacs, a reporter for the Crimson, who receives a tip that her fellow students are working as high-priced hookers.

Aided by suite-mate Chelo, the only student in her East Los Angeles high school to ever be admitted to you-know-where, Toni endangers her academic career to dig up the dirt.

The portrait of campus life rings true, so true that some parents may wonder just what they’re getting for their five-figure tuition checks.

None of the aggressively multicultural, “hipper than thou residents of Adams House” seems to study (though a campus prostitute carries a copy of “The Peloponnesian Wars” when meeting her john), and between the sleazy dean, the smarmy professors and the less-than-honorable folks running the school’s endowment, it’s a wonder anyone gets educated.

Perhaps because the book was written as a collective effort, it lacks the passion of an academic thriller such as Donna Tartts’ “The Secret History,” and the sex scenes are lackluster. I’d give it a B-plus.

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It was eerie reading Jody Jaffe’s “In Colt Blood” (Fawcett Columbine) because her smart-mouthed heroine, Nattie Gold, bears more than a passing physical resemblance to me. She is a small redheaded journalist, based in Charlotte, N.C. (a short hop from Baltimore, where I grew up). Nattie has never gotten over her girlish love of horses (a fascination I got over the first time one threw me).

In this, her entertaining third outing, Nattie is ordered by her editor to interview a horse whisperer. She arrives at a posh stable to meet Sarah Jane Lowell, a New Age belle known for her psychic connection to four-legged creatures, only to discover that Fuzzy McMahon, the stable’s fabulously wealthy but universally disliked owner has been bludgeoned to death. Sarah Jane takes one look at the police cars and flees, taking along Nattie’s outlandish father, Lou.

Despite being warned to mind her own business, Nattie goes off in search of her father.

Jaffe, who has been showing hunters for 25 years, expertly transports the reader to a foreign but intriguing subculture, the horse-show circuit, where if a horse costs more than $125,000, the rider wears her hair over her ears. Jaffe’s take on the politics and frustration that comes with working on a small newspaper are pitch-perfect, too.

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For an entertaining beach read, or if you’re just looking to option a legal thriller for a movie of the week, try Mimi Latt’s “Pursuit of Justice” (Simon & Schuster). Rebecca Brownstein Morland, an idealistic and, of course, beautiful young staff lawyer at the Fairfax Neighborhood Legal Clinic, is grief-stricken when her lawyer husband, Ryan, disappears from the deck of a private yacht cruising in the San Pedro Channel.

His body washes ashore several days later, and the police treat the case as a suicide. Rebecca refuses to believe that her husband would kill himself, even though Ryan was uncharacteristically depressed three weeks before he vanished and his colleagues at a swank Beverly Hills law firm claim that he was embezzling funds.

Determined to prove that he was murdered, Rebecca decides to “make believe this whole mess involves a client. Then figure out what you’d do to help her.” Exhibiting the disregard for self-preservation that is the hallmark of all fictional detectives, Rebecca interrogates everyone connected with the case, blithely alienating tycoons, politicians, Ryan’s ex-lover, even the LAPD officers assigned to the case.

Latt, an attorney, has written a terrific sensual romp that should make some members of Los Angeles’ legal community a little nervous.

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The Times reviews mystery books every other Sunday. Next week: Rochelle O’Gorman Flynn on audio books.