Extra Credits

Peter Finley, cable-TV news reporter and gumshoe without portfolio, returns in New York Daily News sports columnist gLupica's second mystery. This time Finley is confounded by the garish suicide of Julie Samson, a coed at his alma mater, Washington Square University, a thinly disguised NYU. Lea Ballad, a classmate of the dead student, comes to Finley to ask his help in resolving troubling aspects of the young woman's life that point to a larger conspiracy. With the help of Ballad, and the rest of the Finley Report crew, cameraman Marty Pearl and general manager Charlie Davidson, Finley embarks on an investigation of Samson's friends and professors that leads to revelations of grade selling, sex, murder and more. Lupica, however, comes from the one-liner school of progressive tough-guy dialogue, which means a heavy dose of joking sportspeak plus a New York magazine-like obsession with New York City's best bets: best baseball writer, best market, best bars, and so on. The humor is forced, and while the workmanlike story does move along at a brisk, readable pace, the plot twists are about as suspenseful as waiting for a subway trainmaybe they arrive a little early or a little late, but you know they're coming. (May)