Short Takes

BOOKS

Doctoring Death

For forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, having it all means making homemade pasta in the evening and sawing the skullcaps off corpses during the day. Patricia D. Cornwell's heroine, as dignified as her creator's middle initial, drives a Mercedes, looks at home at a tennis club and is down in the morgue before dawn, "up to my elbows in blood." In her third crime procedural, ALL THAT REMAINS (Scribner's; $20), Cornwell sets Dr. Scarpetta against a serial killer of teenage couples. In her cosmos (Richmond, Virginia), murder is never a crime passionel or a grab for wealth. Evil is violent and horrible, and Dr. Scarpetta's nemeses are psychopathic ciphers. The reader's payoff is the compelling forensic play-by-play and the intricate deconstruction of gore.

MUSIC

Hard Heads on the Cutting Edge

After the alternative rock group Nirvana swaggered its way to the top of the charts, record executives scrambled to sign up other cutting-edge bands. A bidding war broke out earlier this year, as eight companies competed to enlist HELMET, an obscure New York City-based band whose debut album on a smaller independent label had sold about 10,000 copies. The winner, Interscope Records, reportedly offered more than $1 million and has released the band's new album, Meantime. So was all the fuss worth it? If your taste runs to unmelodic sounds and obtuse lyrics ("What's the worst or/better dead/wear it out/the pain is in my head"), Interscope's dollars will seem well spent. Otherwise, wear a crash helmet.

CINEMA

Stacked Deck

Nicolas Cage loses big in a poker game. James Caan, the winner, is a professional gambler who offers to forgive the debt if Cage's fiance will spend a weekend with him. The young woman, Sarah Jessica Parker, is glorious and, more important, reminds Caan of his late wife. His object, in HONEYMOON IN VEGAS, is matrimony, not a shabby two-night stand. Still, there is something at best strained, at worst distasteful in the setup, and nothing funny in its frantic working out by writer-director Andrew Bergman. Neither Cage nor Caan hits the right note here; the former is too nutsy, the latter too grim. But in this witless context, they are more to be pitied than censured.

TELEVISION

Good Wager

Why would Bill Cosby give up a successful network sitcom to host a game show from the 1950s long identified with Groucho Marx? Maybe because he gets to chat with everyday folks, like the security guard who patrols women's restrooms, or the teamster who claims to have had an out-of-body experience. The new, syndicated YOU BET YOUR LIFE faithfully reproduces most of the features of the old show, including the secret word (tacked to a goose, not a duck), the superfluous onstage announcer and even some of Groucho's ritual lines ("It's your last chance to beat the other couples"). Game shows in 1992 don't get any more low-tech or laid-back. Nor are there many personalities who could make it work so effortlessly.

BOOKS

Fuzzy Balls, Murky Psyches

The subtitle of Eliot Berry's shrewd and knowledgeable TOUGH DRAW (Holt; $25), an account of the 1990 and '91 pro tennis tour, sounds like Dink Stover at Yale: The Path to Tennis Glory. Ignore this; Berry, who was a good tournament player as a junior, writes about tennis almost as well as Roger Angell writes about baseball. Here's his take on Jean Fleurian, losing a tough one to Pete Sampras: "If the Frenchman could have imagined winning, he would have won." He nails Ivan Lendl's monstrous adequacy: "Antonio Salieri in a sweatsuit." And he quotes a fan's remark about John McEnroe that hits the turbulent center of the man: "He just liked to create chaos. Because he was comfortable with it. With chaos."