SMILLA'S SENSE OF SOW

SMILLA'S SENSE OF SOW Peter Hoeg (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $21) Smilla Jasperson, the heroine of Hoeg's new Danish thriller, towers over other modern heroines like Hamlet the Dane towers over other princes. She's entirely self- sufficient and deliciously articulate: ''I hate lies. If any lying has to be done I'll do it myself.'' And this part-Inuit (whose mother was a Greenland hunter) is a razor-tongued cynic as well: ''It's the kind of day that might make you wonder about the meaning of life and discover that there is none.'' When a neighbor's child is murdered, she pursues the mystery of his death from Copenhagen to Greenland and across frozen seas into the heart of a terrifying secret. ''It's possible to reach a certain age when even your nightmares start to have a halfway soothing and familiar sense to them.'' When a woman who thinks like that narrates an intelligent story full of danger and suspense, don't wait for the paperback. A+ -David Ball