All the Right Answers

Noah is a TV producer who, in the late 1950s, produced a rigged quiz show involved in the widely publicized media scandals. David Beach, the narrator of this earnest novel, is a cynical young TV producer who wonders how he got caught up in the morally sleazy world of fixed game shows. The story lacks the pace, wit and zing that might lift the material above the level of personal catharsis. For Beach's boss, impatient egomaniac Stu Leonard, truth is merely one of several possibilities. But Beach has to contend with his own conscience, his muckraking-reporter girlfriend Margo (who breaks the scandal in the newspapers), his other girlfriend, suicidal Carla, and his Uncle Joe, who would never suspect his nephew of dishonest behavior. Contestants who want out of the cheating scheme are bullied into line, until one whiz-kid squeals to the D.A. Leonard's house of cards comes tumbling down in the last few chapters, which are anticlimactic. The prose does, however, succeed in capturing the uptight, claustrophobic feel of the 1950s. (October)