Hard News

Rune, the shrewd and spunky heroine of Manhattan Is My Beat , returns with a new job as a camerawoman for a local TV news station, but she still believes in magic and lives by her own rules. Rune thinks that Randy Boggs, convicted killer of network news head Lance Hopper, is innocent, and she persuades network dragon lady Piper Sutton, the country's top news anchor, to let her investigate and produce a segment on the murder. Endearing, with lots of moxie but no experience, Rune learns the hard way as she blunders through the world of big-time investigative reporting, making mistakes and trusting the wrong people. She also has to act as a mother to her flaky friend Claire's three-year-old, Ophelia, when Claire runs off to Boston in search of a better life. Deaver's background as a journalist helps him to vivify the competitive, even back-stabbing caste system of network news and to successfully depict the tedium as well as the excitement a reporter experiences when breaking a major story. He writes with clarity, compassion and intelligence, and with a decidedly human and contemporary slant. ( Dec. )