Mrs. Clinton won’t be thanking her any time soon. Though Stewart and Thomases are friends, he quickly broadened his investigation from the Clintons’ critics to the Clintons themselves. Sensing their blunder, the First Lady and her advisers never delivered on their promise to open up to Stewart, but he had already picked up the scent. “Blood Sport,” his book about the scandal that will be published this week by Simon & Schuster, has no devastating revelations. But it paints a highly unflattering portrait of the Clintons – particularly of Mrs. Clinton, who emerges as a shrewish Yuppie out to make a fast buck.

The book disputes Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that she and her husband were mere-ly “passive” investors in Whitewater, the failed venture at the heart of the scandal. The story begins in 1978, when Hillary wanted a baby but was worried about how to support a child. Clinton likely would never make more than $35,000 in office, and he was not shy about his philandering. Stewart quotes Clinton, who had just been elected governor, exulting to a friend, “This is fun. Women are throwing themselves at me. All the while I was growing up, I was the fat boy in the Big Boy jeans.” Clinton’s confidante was Susan McDougal, who along with her husband, Jim, was a high-rolling real-estate investor. To ease the Clintons’ money worries, the McDougals offered them a half share in a new project along the White River. Hillary, who was also using other influential friends to make a quick killing in commodities futures, embraced the go-go spirit of the ’80s. “If Reaganomics works at all, Whitewater could become the Western Hemisphere’s mecca,” she wrote to Jim McDougal.

Instead, Whitewater turned out to be a bust. But when the McDougals offered to relieve the Clintons of their debts, Hillary resisted. “No!” she yelled at Susan McDougal, leaning over her desk. “Jim told me that this was going to pay for college for Chelsea. I still expect it to do that!” In 1987, when one of the Whitewater loans was coming up for review, Stewart alleges, Mrs. Clinton submitted a statement to the bank that overstated the value of the Whitewater property. Though a bank officer worried about the loan, it was renewed. One reason for the forbearance, suggests Stewart, was that the bank was trying to get a state law passed allowing it to expand. Stewart does not prove any quid pro quo between the bank and Governor Clinton, but the circumstances could attract investigators. (A White House spokesman last week denied any wrongdoing by the Clintons.)

Stewart is a good storyteller, but the twists and turns of the Clintons’ financial dealings may bore all but the most devoted Whitewater aficionados. Many will also challenge the credibility of Stewart’s chief sources – Jim and Susan McDougal. Stewart recounts the tale largely through their eyes, re-creating detailed conversations from 10 years ago. Both have reason to be resentful. The McDougals, now divorced, are on trial in Little Rock on bank-fraud charges brought by the Whitewater special prosecutor. Shortly before the trial, McDougal’s psychiatrist testified that the defendant, now 55, suffers from manic depression and other severe mental problems that have left him with memory loss about 50 percent greater than that normally experienced by a man of his age. And when the Little Rock trial is over, Susan must face charges in California that she embezzled more than $150,000 from the famed conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife, Nancy.

Stewart does not have much to add to the most menacing aspect of the scandal – the suicide of Vincent Foster. He does report that shortly before his death, Foster confided to Thomases that his marriage was troubled, that his wife had become a burden and that he could not confide in her. He also told Thomases that he was upset about his relationship with the First Lady, who had begun treating her onetime mentor in the Rose Law Firm as an innocent rube. Thomases strongly insisted to NEWSWEEK that she was not a “major source” for Stewart and said she regrets encouraging him to write the book. “We all make mistakes,” she said. This was a big one.