Gossip

A dubious mixture of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Nancy Drew on Campus, TV anchor Lange's second novel (after Trophy Wife) has all the emotional nourishment of a sound bite. When, in the prologue, Trisha, Lane, Kate and Molly graduate with Briarwood College's Class of 1979, Trisha's dad gives each of them a new gizmo called a telephone answering machine so they can stay in touch no matter where life takes them. Now it's 1998, and the messages fly fast and thick across the country. Lane and Kate are in California: Lane selling antiques and happily married to the police chief of Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Kate in L.A. miserably mated to international gallery owner and pond-scum supreme Austin Feruzzi. Trisha and Molly are uptown and downtown New York--Trisha with a successful radio talk show and a delightful millionaire husband, and Molly with unfulfilled artistic longings and, uh-oh, Kate's husband as her Svengali lover. The phone messages--which go on long enough to exhaust most tapes--are salted with brand names (""Miss Adams, this is Belinda Williams at the Emporio Armani on Fifth Avenue""; ""Katie, hi, it's Lane. I'm in my Explorer and heading to Los Angeles""). Since every major character expressly wishes wife-battering, philandering, art-forging, jewel-smuggling Austin Feruzzi dead, it won't spoil the suspense to reveal that he is murdered. The intrepid four bring the killer to a kind of justice in a bloody scene that lets Molly redeem herself and makes way for a happy ending. Lange is certainly au courant, but, alas, readers will want to switch channels halfway through. (Oct.)