SEX CRIMES

SEX CRIMES Jenefer Shute (Doubleday, $18.95) The flinty Christine Chandler is a successful Boston lawyer whose charged relationship with a younger man results in a bizarre crime roiling with mythic undercurrents. Awaiting her trial, Chandler tells her story with a mix of icy honesty and slippery lies, keeping the reader guessing about whether she's stone crazy or misunderstood. The book -- which should win an award for best closing line of the year -- delivers the answer like a slap in the face. Chandler is desperately lonely, scorchingly funny (when her relationship goes awry, she feels like ''a gastropod with its shell pecked off''), and like the best villains, both unlikable and irresistible. A delightfully unwholesome piece of pulp fiction. A