ENGLISH-IRISH TALE OF VICTORIAN MURDER.

Byline: Bobbie Hall San Francisco Examiner 

``Ashworth Hall'' by Anne Perry (Fawcett Columbine, 373 pages; $24).

Perry's 17th Victorian mystery featuring London's Bow Street Station Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, is an intriguing charmer.

``Ashworth Hall'' begins with Pitt staring at the body of a man in an alley off Oxford Street. The constable at the scene tells Pitt that the murdered man is an undercover officer who was trying to infiltrate the Fenians, a secret Irish revolutionary society. However, four days later Pitt is called off the case and told he must go to Ashworth Hall, the home of his sister-in-law, where a conference on the Irish problem is to be held. Assistant Commissioner Cornwallis tells Pitt that his job is to guard the conference's chairman, Ainsley Greville.

Pitt is instructed to take his wife, her maid and a fellow officer to act as Pitt's valet. Unfortunately for all, Greville is found murdered in his bath a few days after the conference began. And it could not have been done by an outsider. So Pitt, with Charlotte's help, must figure out which of the conference's participants and/or their servants killed Greville.

As the investigation unfolds, Perry paints a vivid portrait of the difference in the English and Irish classes. As the Catholics and Protestants tell their sides, one could almost be reading a newspaper story out of Ireland today.

But ``Ashworth Hall'' becomes the most real when it focuses on 20-year-old Gracie, Charlotte's maid since Gracie was 13. This down-to-earth servant with a heart of gold has more common sense than most, and reports every detail she notices to Pitt. But your heart goes out when Gracie has her first brush with romance - the handsome Irish valet, Finn Hennessey.

My only complaint with ``Ashworth Hall'' is that when Pitt narrows the field and begins the arrest of Greville's killer, it all happens in too few pages. I wanted more.

``The Bone Collector'' by Jeffrey Deaver (Viking, 418 pages; $22.95).

Deaver uses characters with physical disadvantages to put an added twist to his top-notch thrillers.

On a Saturday night, two business colleagues get into a Yellow Cab at JFK Airport, only to be taken to a deserted railroad track on New York's West Side, where the man is shot and buried alive - with his hand reaching out of the grave, the skin and tissue on one finger stripped off, wearing the ring of the female hostage. Beat cop Amelia Sachs is first on the scene.

Hoping to find the woman alive, police officials ask their former head of forensics, Lincoln Rhyme, to help in the investigation. Hit by a beam that fell on him while working a crime scene, Rhyme is now a suicidal quadriplegic who can only move his head, shoulders and left ring finger.

After saying no, Rhyme eventually gets involved and demands that Officer Sachs become his legs and eyes at the railroad track. He sends her to search for clues, which she eventually finds - clues that lead to the woman hostage, but not in time to save her. She was scalded to death. Again the killer leaves clues, and it is up to Rhyme to decode them before there is another victim.

Rhyme is a great character - his intelligence fights with his world-weary cynicism. Sachs is a fine partner - a beautiful, compassionate redhead with a temper. And the killer is a devious psychopath who loves watching his victims die. There is a scene with rats that is about as chilling as I've ever come across. I hope Deaver writes another thriller with Rhyme and Sachs.

``Tom Clancy's Op-Center - Acts of War'' by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik (Berkeley Books, 492 pages; $7.50 paperback).

This fourth ``Op-Center'' is the best - the authors have cut down on the techno-jargon and put much more effort into character development and plot.

Op Center's Matt Stoll and Mary Rose Mohalley have created a mobile Op Center called the ROC. Mary Rose, Col. Mike Rodgers of the center's strike team and four others take the ROC to Turkey for field tests. Their Turkish liaison is Col. Seden.

Shortly after the team arrives, Kurdish terrorists in Syria sneak over the border into Turkey and blow up the Ataturk Dam, killing hundreds and bringing the region to the brink of war. Learning of the devastation, Rodgers and Seden take off on a motorcycle to investigate the damage, only to be taken prisoner by the three surviving terrorists. They eventually gain control of the ROC and its human cargo and head for Syria's Bekaa Valley to meet up with the Kurdish leaders.

In Washington, the president sends Op Center's boss, Paul Hood, to London and Turkey to try to find a diplomatic solution to ease tensions in the Mideast. On arrival in Damascus, Hood and his contingent learn that Turkey and Syria have massed troops on their borders. Before the negotiations begin, Kurds invade the presidential palace.

Like most Clancy novels, the story lines jump back and forth. ``Acts of War'' is a fast-paced geopolitical thriller. By really getting into the characters, the authors have humanized both the terrorists and the hostages and make their tale ring true.

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Photo: no caption (Book cover - ASHWORTH HALL)