RESCUE ME: A Love Story.(Review)(Brief Article)

GIGI LEVANGIE GRAZER. Simon & Schuster, $23 (272p) ISBN 0-684-87073-8

Screenwriter Grazer's (Stepmom) first novel is an unconvincing love story set in Los Angeles during the mid-1980s. Amanda McHenry has just graduated from UCLA and landed a dead-end job at a second-rate talk show while her boyfriend, James, a Venezuelan immigrant whose duplicity and self-absorption are reiterated tiresomely, has attended Harvard Law School, intent on being accepted as a member of the Caucasian elite. While Amanda plays mother to her infant nephew Madison and her charming, deadbeat, drug-dealing brother, Valentin, she's also making ends meet and fending off her boss's advances. James …