MURDER WITHIN EARSHOT; BEST MYSTERIES ON AUDIO CONVEY MOOD, DIALOGUE.

Byline: Tom Nolan and Dick Lochte Special to the Daily News

Good mystery fiction is tricky to adapt for audio: Include too many descriptive passages and you can neglect the suspense; stick to just dialogue, though, and you often lose what's best about the writer's prose. One solution is to dramatize the novel in a way that translates plot and mood into speech and sound; another answer is simply to do the whole book.

Both approaches are combined to splendid effect in ``Sleeping Beauty'' (Audio Editions, seven hours; $35), Santa Monica NPR station KCRW's terrific unabridged 1996 radio adaptation of Ross Macdonald's classic 1973 novel. An oil spill off the shore of the La Jolla-like town of Pacific Point symbolizes the corrupt human environment that private detective Lew Archer encounters as he looks for a missing young woman whose apparent kidnapping seems tied to several murders. Macdonald's beautifully written book (which blends his poetic refinement of the hard-boiled style with elements of medieval quest, French fable and modern drama) is an ideal choice for unabridged treatment; and Harris Yulin proves the perfect voice of Archer in this landmark radio production, which Yulin also directed.

A 35-member cast of actors' actors (Ed Asner, Richard Masur, Shirley Knight, Jeff Corey, Penny Fuller, Nan Martin, Stacey Keach, Anthony Zerbe) yields several other notable performances, enhanced by Stephen Croes' evocative original score.

The achievement seems all the more remarkable when compared to the uninspired, Random House Audiobooks' abbreviated adaptations of two other excellent entries in the Archer series - ``The Chill'' and ``Black Money.''

Carl Hiaasen's wacky crime yarns are about 180 degrees from Macdonald's often somber tales, and they take place in this country's other coastal sunshine state, Florida. But their ever-changing protagonists do possess a sense of obligation and a yearning for justice like the one that moves Lew Archer into action. In his newest caper, ``Lucky You'' (Random House Audiobooks; three hours, abridged; $18), the plot revolves around the problems that beset JoLayne Lucks when she is picked to split a $28 million lottery jackpot with Bodeen Gazzer and his buddy Chub. Lucks is an African-American; Bodeen and Chub are redneck sociopaths who are trying to start their own white supremacist organization. When they attack her and steal her ticket, she (think Pam Grier) and a down-on-his-luck reporter named Tom Krome (think the reborn Burt Reynolds) take off after them. The wild and woolly chase across a bumpy Florida landscape, populated by an assortment of typical Hiaasen weirdos and screwballs, makes for an amusing trip. And Ed Asner, one of the best narrators in the biz, captures every nuance, malevolent to mirthful, that the material offers.

Sherlock Holmes, the most famous figure in detective fiction, is also one of the most often dramatized. ``The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes'' (BDD Audio, three hours; $16.99) packages four episodes of a recent BBC radio series featuring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as his turn-of-the-century colleague Dr. Watson. The accent here is on grim realism; Holmes is less a brilliant sleuth than a shrewd judge of human nature in these interestingly conceived and well done shows directed by Enyd Williams. This quartet of stories (``The Mazarin Stone'' and ``The Three Gables'' among them) from the less familiar Holmes tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are linked by the arcing subplot device of the widowed Dr. Watson's second marriage and honeymoon.

Arguably this country's answer to Sherlock Holmes, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, a reclusive gourmet weighing in at one-seventh of a ton, is a much closer match, both physically and mentally, to the great detective's older brother Mycroft. Like Mycroft he has an almost photographic memory, and like Sherlock is capable of drawing inferences and information from the driest source. In ``The Doorbell Rang'' (Durkin Hayes; two hours, 10 minutes, abridged; $16.99) the gargantuan, sedentary sleuth is offered a blank check to come up with a plan to stop an FBI investigation. The money certainly appeals to him. But even more rewarding is the opportunity for him (and author Stout) to make the bureau look foolish. Possibly because of the novel's bias, and the cleverness with which Wolfe accomplishes his task (while solving the murder of an investigative reporter), many consider this among the author's best. We're not sure we'd go that far, particularly since Wolfe's investigation winds up relying heavily on information placed in his large lap by his friendly antagonist NYPD Lt. Cramer. And the novel's punchline has been blunted a bit by the passage of time.

Unequivocally entertaining, ``Champagne for One,'' (Durkin Hayes, three hours, abridged; $16.99), adapted from a 1958 Wolfe mystery, finds Archie Goodwin, the detective's clever and resourceful leg man, attending a society dinner benefiting unwed mothers. When one of them is poisoned, the general consensus is that she took her own life. But Archie thinks otherwise and his boss trusts his judgment in such matters enough to stage a hunt for the killer. In both ``Champagne'' and ``Doorbell,'' reader Saul Rubinek (``Nixon,'' ``The Unforgiven'') is such good company, evoking both the monumental Wolfe and the wiry, wisecracking Archie (along with the other diverse characters in the tales), we wound up wishing Durkin Hayes had extended the adaptations to the six-hour format that seems to be coming into vogue.

Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot has become, like Sherlock Holmes, an enduring presence on the airwaves. ``Murder in Mesopotamia'' (BDD Audio, two hours, 20 minutes; $16.99) is a 1996 BBC drama based on Christie's 1936 book, which takes a vacationing Poirot into the Iraqi desert to investigate the death of an archaeologist's wife. John Moffatt, veteran of several such shows, is - as always -impeccable as Poirot; and the rest of the English players are also first rate. The sound patterns here are especially good: Listening to this Mesopotamian adventure (with its chanting workers, tapping hammers and untuned motorcar engines), you can almost feel the heat and taste the desert dust.

Christie's second-best-known series character, Jane Marple, made her book debut in 1930 with ``Murder at the Vicarage'' (BDD Audio, two hours, 15 minutes; $16.99), serviceably adapted for radio in this 1994 BBC production directed (like ``Mesopotamia'') by the busy Enyd Williams. June Whitfield's Miss Marple is a far cry from the circumspect village sage played on TV by Joan Hickson; Whitfield's Marple is more of a bland busybody. This tame investigation into the death of quarrelsome Colonel Protheroe in the vicar's study may tax the patience of all but the most devoted Clue player.

P.D. James, the contemporary English mystery novelist, was once hailed as Agatha Christie's successor and the new ``Queen of Crime.'' The only things the two writers have in common are gender, genre, nationality and a talent for plotting. James' books are much more darkly realistic than Christie's. Her latest artful best seller, ``A Certain Justice'' (Random House Audiobooks, 15-1/2 hours; $44.95), receives a fine unabridged, one-man performance by English actor Michael Jayston. The novel is set mainly in the wood-paneled courts and cloistered chambers of London's legal community, where a not-much-liked woman lawyer who specializes in defending reprehensible criminal clients is found fatally stabbed. Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, aided by Detective Inspector Kate Miskin, confronts an abundance of suspects, including a creepy young man whom the victim helped get acquitted of murder and the victim's deeply alienated daughter. James is especially good at evoking mood and relating personal histories in ways that utterly convince. Reader Jayston does more than a certain justice to the gripping text.