`NIGHT TRAIN' GLIDES ALONG TO UNSATISFYING DESTINATION.

Byline: Joyce Irvine Special to the Daily News

``Night Train''

By Martin Amis 

(175 pages, Harmony Books; $20)

Our rating: Three Stars

``Night Train'' is an irresistibly readable book, difficult to put down, but as short as it is, it almost possible to finish at a sitting.

Amis' prose, finely honed, witty and self-assured, glides along the page, drawing us with it. There is not a single extraneous syllable. He paints a vivid picture with great economy and style, like Chinese calligraphy.

Unfortunately, style wins out over content. It is almost as if he wants to plumb the depths but can't quite do it. He hides his soul beneath an elegant overcoat.

The book is about death, about the single shocking, searing, unknowable event that rocks our lives from time to time and unseen, unfelt, forever lurks in the background. It is unseen and unfelt because we don't want to see it or feel it, don't want to admit its threatening presence into our giddy dance toward the grave. And yet, it carries a certain forbidden fascination.

Amis is drawn to address it but doesn't quite dare to dig deep. So he writes the book as an exercise in noir style, which is a useful cloak for feeling, sets it in America, which is not his own country, and writes in the first person as a woman, which is not his own sex. And he sets out to explore the awesome mystery, the final truth of death from these standpoints.

Detective Mike Hoolihan is a woman and as she puts it ``a police.'' A big lady with dyed blond hair, she is middle-age, hard bitten and a reformed alcoholic with eight years in big-city homicide to her credit. She is called in to investigate the suicide of a friend, the beautiful, educated, intelligent daughter (Jennifer) of her ex-boss, Col. Tom Rockwell, who won't accept the death as suicide. Jennifer had everything to live for yet she is found dead, apparently by her own hand. Was it, in fact, homicide? If so, who killed her? If not, why on earth did she do it? These are the questions that face Mike and entangle her in a more personal struggle.

Jennifer is the daughter of ``a police.'' Mike has known her since she was a child. As she delves into Jennifer's life, looking for answers to who and why, she is brought face to face with her own past, her own life and choices. Each new clue, each new investigative avenue yields fresh information about Mike's life but little about Jennifer's except its sheer perfection.

The literary device catches us and makes the book entertaining reading, but the characters are somewhat contrived. Jennifer is a shadowy figure, but after all, she is dead. How could anyone that perfect ever live, anyway? Perhaps she is merely a counterpoint for the ``real'' person of Mike, with all her faults, flaws and problems. Jennifer's life and the dark secret of her death haunts Mike, providing a canvas for her self-portrait. But Mike doesn't quite ring true. Somehow she is not quite a woman, although she is not a man, either. Her spirit, however, is pure Martin Amis, tongue firmly in cheek.

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Photo: no caption (Book cover - NIGHT TRAIN)