We Interrupt This Broadcast

The author of the Jane DaSilva mysteries (Cold Smoked, 1995) enters a new milieu with this comic tale of a beleaguered classical radio station in Seattle. A dinosaur in the jungle of popular culture, station KLEG was established by a local arts patron and is now owned--and supported by--heirs Caroline and Franklin Payne. Ditzy, oft-married Caroline and her curmudgeonly lawyer brother Franklin are at odds about everything, including KLEG's future. After the body of a sleazy sales rep, who at Franklin's behest had been secretly looking for a buyer, is found fatally shot in the station's sofabed, police and station personnel soon discover that the dead man had been running an escort service. Looking through his files, newly hired Alice Jordan, a likable divorcee with an interest in true crime, uncovers a connection to a creepy neo-Nazi. While the plot here stirs only lukewarm interest, the cast, particularly the eccentric, mainly antediluvian KLEG staff, prove ready vehicles for Beck's edgy, sarcastic humor. A few of them are painted too broadly (receptionist Judy is unrelievedly bitchy; over-the-hill disk jockey Bob is egotistically smarmy and Caroline is annoyingly naive), but Alice, though not often on center stage, is appealing. Beck delivers nicely on the mystery of the true identity of a sultry-voiced disk jockey, Theresa, Queen of the Night, and offers up a pleasingly antic finale in the KLEG studio. (Nov.)