cover image He's Dead--She's Dead, Details at Eleven

He's Dead--She's Dead, Details at Eleven

John Bartholomew Tucker. St. Martin's Press, $17.95 (312pp) ISBN 978-0-312-04325-4

James Sasser may have written five bestselling thrillers, but he is suitably incredulous when his Vietnam buddy and former co-worker Terry Jones asks him to discover who is sending death threats to people at his former TV station, the Republic Broadcasting System. Sasser asserts that he needs this assignment ``like a hole in the head,'' but when a lovely receptionist is bludgeoned to death he accepts the case, and is soon up to his elbows in suspects both beautiful and powerful. Could the guilty party be a disgruntled employee dismissed after the station's corporate takeover--or could the trouble have something to do with RBS's investigation into drug cartels? A confession by newly fired newsman Dick Ainsley seems to be the answer, until he, too, is offed, leaving behind a message that cryptically identifies his killer. Before Sasser blunders his way to a solution, he is menaced and shot at, but finally confronts his culprit--in a blimp! Tucker ( The Man Who Looked Like Howard Cosell ) writes with authority of a milieu he knows well, and imbues his amateur sleuth with humor. Though his plot is cluttered at times, most of the action is fast-paced and saturated with the color of New York City and the world of TV journalism. (July)