by JULIET WATERS

Before it was published as The Story of Jane Doe, the working title of the memoir by the rape victim who successfully sued the Toronto Police Department was Jane Doe's Coffee Table Rape Book. But a market survey indicated the original title wouldn't sell.

Too bad. Part journal, part comix, part scrapbook, this book is held together by a narrative as compelling as any Law & Order episode. It would make a great coffee table book. Pick it up, flip through it, dip into the story at any point and you will come away better informed and surprisingly entertained by Doe's sharp mind and punk sense of humour. Read it in one sitting and you'll wind up more than a little numb.

The working title is also a good jab at another book that was in many ways responsible for the worst event of Doe's life. At the time of her rape, in 1986, The Oliver Zink Rape Cookbook was a standard police procedural manual. After consulting it, the police decided Doe's rapist fit the profile of the "Gentleman Rapist." He had already raped four women before he got to Doe (and that's only reported assaults.) Though he crawled into their apartments through the balcony at night, wore a mask and threatened them with a knife, he wasn't considered "violent" because he didn't maim or kill. The police decided women weren't in enough danger to compromise their investigation by scaring him away.

Doe, a feminist before her rape and the child of a long line of Maritime working-class union activists, defied police advice and postered her neighbourhood. Two days later, the police were tipped off by a parole officer who saw a poster, and the assailant - who had a record for rape - was caught. Buddy (the name Doe gives him, an example of her typically wry Maritime humour) confessed. But his legal aid lawyer convinced him to go to court anyway. Doe, after hiring her own lawyer, became the first rape victim in Canada to win the right to attend the trial. Eventually Buddy struck a deal with the Crown so he could avoid being declared a dangerous offender. But what Doe learned during the trial convinced her to launch a civil case against the Toronto Police Department. Eleven years later Doe won, but not before she learned the law and order system inside and out. Her perspective as a "victim" is priceless. It's her attitude as a fighter, however, that makes this such a brilliant book.

If you take away only one thing from this review it should be that if you are ever raped, get your own lawyer, and hopefully one who will listen to you. Hopefully one who will read this book. Don't depend on the police, or the Crown, or even some well meaning feminist legal collective to look out for your interests. Their interests, understandably, are in protecting their pathetically scarce resources. Unless you're a reclusive virgin beaten practically to death by a serial rapist who confesses on TV, don't count on them.

It's for this reason that Jane Doe's victory is something of a hollow one. Her enemy was never just the Toronto Police Department, or even Buddy. Her enemy continues to be the denial that rape is a significant danger to all women, no matter where they live. Every 17 minutes a woman is raped; as Jane Doe argues, if every 17 minutes lawyers or doctors were being beaten up, the army would be called in. Instead we're advised to lock our doors. The enemy is the negligence of governments across Canada in allocating the resources needed to deal with a crime that is only escalating.

Doe writes that her intention with this book was to put the issue of rape "on the table." Maybe for now we should take her literally.

The Story of Jane Doe by Jane Doe. Random House, hc., 360pp, $39.95. Jane Doe will be speaking at the McGill Redpath Auditorium, Monday, April 28, 6pm