BOMBAY ICE

BOMBAY ICE Leslie Forbes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24) Roz Bengal, a thirtyish BBC journalist of Indian and Scottish descent, is summoned to monsoon-season Bombay by her sister Miranda. Married to a leading Bollywood director widely suspected of offing his first wife, Miranda won't explain why the recent murders of eunuch prostitutes put her own life in peril. As Roz chases scattershot leads through Bombay's dazzlingly variegated subcultures, the plot's strange brew of arcana, erotica, and violence -- tapping subjects from poison lore to Bollywood-version Shakespeare -- proves heady. Forbes' most multi-faceted creation is brash, unbalanced Roz: Thanks to this richly unreliable narrator, Bombay Ice manages to be both a brainy thriller and a psychological striptease. A-