FICTION

DAZZLE by Judith Krantz (Crown Publishers: $21.95; 512 pp.). Busy Judith Krantz takes understandable umbrage at being labeled “the queen of trash”--as well she should. If her works carry no deep message, the same charge can be leveled against 98% of the fiction hitting the market. Krantz is a whale of a storyteller, as “Dazzle” amply proves. World-famous photographer Jazz Kilkullen is, of course, glamorous, rich and successful, and shares a studio--called “Dazzle” for no apparent reason--with two equally famous male photographers. Jazz’s father owns the last large,Spanish-land-grant working ranch in Orange County, a valuable property on which all kinds of people are scheming. There are all sorts of skulduggery here, including Jazz’s double-crossing agent and a frantic search for the original land-grant covenant which, if found, might put the ranch off limits to commercial development. OK, so there’s nothing deathless here, and a fair amount of breathlessness, but sometimes we wish that 10% of the novelists who hit print with more noble aspirations could tell a story half as good as this.