Looking for Mr. Good-Bar, Judith Rossner's 1975 cautionary tale for the sexually adventurous, was about a young woman who picked up Mr. Wrong and ended up dead. Rossner's Perfidia (Doubleday; 308 pages; $23.95) exemplifies braver, newer twists on the old woman-in-jeopardy plot.
Madeleine Stern, the novel's captivating memoirist, could be Thelma or Louise's kid sister. That is, if those cinema folk heroes had been honor students and lived on the right side of Santa Fe. Rossner has New Mexico's picturesque capital down pat. The recently arrived artists, gallery owners and real estate buyers are dead on as promoters of the highly...