TREMOR VIOLET

A catastrophic disaster story courtesy of the San Andreas Fault and the author of E Pluribus Bang! This time the Western Seismological Institute's computer predicts that a major earthquake will rock L.A. two hours hence. . . disbelieving city officials do nothing. . . and the cataclysm is history (or is it ""God's will""?). Whatever, once she arrives at 5:17 P.M., Violet proves to be most inopportune for all concerned: namely, a suicidal Quaker-reared wife who's so shaken by the bad vibes that her overdose of Tuinal spews forth; Armenian newlyweds who ultimately take a plunge from a 30-floor skyscraper; a Griffith Park zookeeper later compelled to shoot his runaway pets; a clever fruitcake planning to kill his mother by electronic interference with her pacemaker; two escaped convicts subjecting a Japanese family to a few desperate hours; a turned-on helicopter traffic reporter; an activist Jesuit priest; an about-to-be-prosecuted motelowning voyeur (the estranged husband of the aforementioned suicidal woman); etc., etc. No great shakes--in fact, like all those tottering high rises, it's nearly un/insupportable.