FACES TO WATCH SUSAN CROSLAND

She's a household name in Britain, and if Random House has its way, she'll soon be one here. Novelist Susan Crosland-dubbed ''the thinking reader's Jackie Collins'' by The Times of London-set the British literary world abuzz in 1989 with her first novel, the thriller Ruling Passions. Now she has done it again with her second, Dangerous Games, just out in Britain and slated for May publication here. Crosland, 56, a veteran journalist (and widow of prominent Labour party figure Anthony Crosland), says the highly successful novelist- politician Jeffrey Archer cornered her at a dinner party in 1986 and told her that her style would lend itself well to fiction. She was then working on a biography of gentleman spy Anthony Blunt, but ''I just couldn't finish that book,'' she admits. ''And I was in debt-I'd already spent a third of my advance on a Porsche.'' So she took Archer's advice and wrote a novel instead. Like Passions, her new book is about the two worlds she knows best: journalism and politics. ''But it's not a political novel,'' insists Crosland, who's such an insider that she knows the colors of the sofas at 10 Downing Street. ''It's a melodrama. With a fair bit of violence and humorous sex thrown in.'' Sure sounds like politics.