Greeley `mystery' a soggy sermon

A Hollywood superstar - a Chicago-born Irish Catholic - comes hometo visit. In her North Side hotel, she is bludgeoned and burned withcigarets, then hovers near death in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Did her accountant husband, an unimaginative, shy man, do thedeed? Or her tough, loyal, foul-mouthed childhood girlfriend? Herpompous, malicious, cardiologist brother? Her slimy agent? Apsychopath off the street?

You won't much care by the time Andrew Greeley winds up HappyAre the Clean of Heart (Warner, $3.95), his second paperback-originalmystery. His sleuth, Msgr. John Blackwood ("Blackie") Ryan of HolyName Cathedral, is more into preaching and philosophizing thanprying.

Greeley uses the old gimmick of viewing the victim from thedifferent viewpoints of the principal characters. Is she a seducer,as her husband says, or a woman who doesn't need much physicalaffection, as her friend thinks? Was she pure of heart or did shelive the high life? Was she aggressive in business or meek and mild?

You'll never know, for Greeley clogs his plot. He begins it as asermon on envy, then endlessly interrupts the action with opinions onsundry matters such as a World War II battle, the Chicago Cubs'pennant loss in 1984, the sociology of a middle-class Roman Catholicneighborhood, childhood memories, sexual gropings, feminism, thehorrors of Water Tower Place ("an insult to the eye of all who mustwalk down the Magnificent Mile") and even Sun-Times movie criticRoger Ebert (who does not smoke) happily puffing a cigar.

His sentences sag: "The fog that hung over the city, some sort of meteorlogical accident accompanying the dastardlyinjustice worked by Steve Garvey and his friends in taking theNational League championship away from our Cubs, was closing inagain."

Incidentally, Greeley's first science fiction novel, God Game(Warner, $16.95) was recently published. His biography, Confessionsof a Parish Priest, is being brought out in hardcover next month bySimon and Schuster. His third Blackie Ryan mystery is due nextsummer.

Meanwhile, there are some decent mysteries in softcover:

Flood, by Andrew H. Vachss (Pocket Books, $4.50). Asuper-cynical private eye named Burke helps a woman find the man whomolested and killed a friend's child.

Murder at the FBI, by Margaret Truman (Fawcett, $3.95). Hersixth Washington whodunit: Who killed an agent in front of touristsvisiting FBI headquarters? NEW ORIGINALS

Bed & Breakfast Coast to Coast, by Bernice Chesler (Penguin,$12.95). The new guide to B & Bs gives descriptions and names andaddresses to write for information and reservations of private roomsand apartments all over the United States. NEW REPRINTS

Elvis and Me, by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley with Sandra Harmon(Berkley, $4.50). The actress's revelations of life with Elvis.