''Hastened To The Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation''

------------------------------- "Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation" by Jack Olsen St. Martin's, $24.95 -------------------------------

The ethnic group known as Gypsies, also called Romanies, are a secretive and alluring bunch. Their reputation for evil and chicanery, which is sometimes genuinely justified, spans continents and centuries. Who can resist a juicy story about these mysterious people? Certainly not Jack Olsen, the award-winning true-crime writer based on Bainbridge Island.

"Hastened to the Grave" does not pretend to be a broad sociological study. For that, readers would be better off with any of several treatises, such as Isabel Fonseca's recent (and excellent) "Bury Me Standing." Instead, Olsen deeply explores a single case within America's Gypsy subculture.

As a result, the new book lacks the sweep of Olsen's last outing, "Salt of the Earth," a haunting story of Northwest murder and justice. It also relies too heavily on Olsen's penchant for invented dialogue, which (to my mind) distracts more than it aids. True-crime writing relies on just that - truth - for its clout; using quotes that cannot be attributed somehow lessens this impact.

Those reservations aside, "Hastened to the Grave" is an absorbing tale. Its central character is an eccentric California private eye, Fay Faron, who likes to pose with stylish hats and is known professionally as Rat Dog Dick. (Someone once told her she was as tenacious as a dog hunting rats.)

Faron becomes obsessed with the suspicious death of an elderly Russian woman in San Francisco who had willed her valuable house to a boarder, a huge, shambling Gypsy called Danny Tene. Faron uncovers a complex, interweaving scam in which lonely, elderly people were befriended and slowly poisoned for their money and houses. Some aspects of this case, which involved an extended Gypsy family spanning both coasts, are still pending.