THE SKELLY MAN

You might think failing TV comic Jerry Corbin, tossed back to his hometown of Lowell, Mass., to emcee The New Gong Show, couldn't sink much lower, but you'd be wrong: He's now getting threatening notes from somebody who either wants to gong him or puzzle him to death (``Back in the boneyard you'll hear the Gong of Doom . . .''). Naturally, Jerry has his people call in Alex Rasmussen (The Heaven Stone, 1994), Lowell's answer to Philip Marlowe. Rasmussen, after stumbling on the not-quite-dead body of Jerry's old classmate Florence Ryan Murphy, has the wit to trace Jerry's troubles back to a TV competition that his UMass/Lowell team won against Harvard. For the rest of it...well, you wouldn't believe how vindictive those Crimson alums can be. Rasmussen's cut back on his ham-handed dialogue, but unless you count the hit-or-miss plotting, this still isn't much of a memorial to Chandler.