cover image Club Dead

Club Dead

Jerry Oster. HarperCollins Publishers, $15.45 (242pp) ISBN 978-0-06-015987-0

A fast-paced, action-filled tale, Oster's latest mystery conveys the gritty taste of Manhattan, its cops, newspapermen and underworld. Charles Ives, an investigative reporter for the Herald , is killed in a fall from a Park Avenue high-rise, residence of federal prosecutor Frances McAlistair, a potential candidate for high office and the subject of a laudatory profile by Ives. The computer assigns the case to be handled jointly by lieutenants Jake Neuman and Dave Milner, who hate each other. As the case develops, however, and their investigatory techniques work in harmony and complement each other, their attitudes begin to thaw. Focus of their queries is information Ives had uncovered in the lengthy research he conducted for the profile, facts known to Ives's former girlfriend, who is on the run. Blackmail is considered a strong possibility, and it appears that Ives had been in love with McAlistair. At the same time, ``Dead Eddie'' Milano, a medium-grade Mafioso seeking to make it into the big time, is arranging to rub out some of his enemies through a sting arranged by McAlistair's office. He knows about the operation because one of the girls in his phone sex service moonlights there from her regular job as a staff lawyer in McAlistair's office to support her coke habit. Both cases converge, leading to an unexpected and satisfactory denouement. Oster ( Saint Mike ) further demonstrates his good ear for dialogue, giving each character a distinctive voice. (September)