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Ten accounts exploring the psychological forces that drive affluent people to destroy themselves and others focus on a New England professor's obsession with a prostitute, the drug-related deaths of twin gynecologists, and other cases

The murderers and manics in this collection of stories are all respectable folk, members of the professional, academic and business middle class. Though based on interviews, transcripts and other factual records, the tales are recounted as nonfiction short stories including an account of the double suicide of the Marcus twins, Manhattan gynecologists, which Wolfe expanded into a novel, Private Practices. These accounts have powerful narrative interest and the author explores background and psychological forces as clues to her subjects' behavior. While they occur without obvious warning, the tragedies perpetrated by her subjects, she affirms, didn't just happen; outward serenity often masks inhibitions, frustrations and resentment, along with drug-induced or psychiatric disorders. Photos not seen by PW. Literary Guild alternate. (May 29) Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.