Dead Air

New York Daily News sports columnist Lupica's first novel launches a mystery series. The star is Peter Finley, reporter for a cable TV channel and narrator of this funky tale. Coming to Finley's Manhattan office from a small Alabama town, Billy Lynn electrifies the reporter by claiming he had been married to Peggy Lynn Brady, a top-rated hostess on a TV network. Missing and presumed murdered, Brady had climbed (bed by bed) to fame and fortune, making enemies along the way. Finley agrees to help Lynn find the woman's killer, keeping the partnership a secret from the police. The reporter's job is interviewing Brady's producer, colleagues and the video preacher who wants to buy the network she had turned into a lucrative propostiion. But the killings of others intimately linked to the actress change Finley's investigative methods and bring him to a shocking discovery. The story is original and entertaining and could have been even more satisfying without the plethora of self-conscious quips littering the pages like candy wrappers on the sidewalks of New York. (May 23)