Liz Higgins, an ambitious feature writer for a newspaper something like the real-life tabloid Boston Herald, wants to be taken seriously inside her newsroom and by her competitors at something like the weightier real-life broadsheet Boston Globe.

Intelligent, attractive and in her early 30s, Higgins is the creation of Rosemary Herbert, a veteran Boston Herald editor and feature writer. Herbert is also the editor of mystery fiction anthologies. "Front Page Teaser" is her first novel.

Higgins creates an opportunity to try serious journalism when she inserts herself into the media's investigation of an accomplished woman reported missing under suspicious circumstances in December of 2000. It makes no sense to Higgins that Ellen Johnasson, devoted mother of an 8-year-old daughter and devoted wife of a successful husband, would disappear from her suburban Boston home. But the more Higgins uncovers, the more she wonders whether Johnasson is involved in Muslim-related terrorist activities. Higgins -- with help from two male suitors, newsroom colleagues, unlikely civilian sources, and law enforcement agents -- solves the disappearance soon after Sept. 11, 2001, a tragic day in real life that figures in the novel's plot.

Although the book is a valiant first effort, Herbert could learn a lot from the first-rate fiction she has anthologized. Within the novel, much of the dialogue is stilted, clichés abound and several plots twists are introduced awkwardly. Those criticisms noted, I hope Herbert composes a second Liz Higgins novel for mystery fiction fans to judge.

STEVE WEINBERG