CROUCHING BUZZARD, LEAPING LOON

Bereft of her drama teacher sweetie, off filming a TV series, blacksmith/amateur sleuth Meg Langslow (Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingoes, 2001, etc.) has gone undercover as an office manager at her brother Rob’s suburban Virginia software firm because he thinks something’s fishy. But it’s hard to imagine how things could be any fishier than the normal routine at Mutant Wizards, whose regulars include a programmer dressed as a police officer; a system administrator who’s running a porn site off the company’s hardware; a disgruntled ex-employee, a tattooed biker, and a rabid fan of Rob’s program, “Lawyers from Hell,” who seem to have the office staked out for unrelated reasons; a system administrator who’s stalking Meg personally; half a dozen leftover psychotherapists who refuse to vacate their offices; and an Irish wolfhound, a pair of St. Bernards, and a one-winged buzzard. In fact, the only reason Meg doesn’t notice that office wag Ted Corrigan’s corpse has been dumped on the automated mail cart that keeps going past her desk at reception is that Ted had been playing dead all morning. The plot ought to thicken with the news that the office jokester was the office blackmailer, but Andrews is too busy cracking gorgeous jokes to develop any of the suspects, or most of their secrets; the star of the wildly over-the-top finale could have been any of a dozen faceless lunatics.

Even so, Andrews is unlikely ever to find a setting better suited to her brand of frantically inventive farce than Silicon Valley East.