QUAKE CITY

Welcome to the world beyond the Big One of '97, the earthquake that turned California into an island covered by uninhabitable rubble and post-apocalyptic theme parks. Money's been replaced by electronic ``Creds,'' and incarceration has given way to drugs that age you 25 years in a few hours. But some things never change, like the certainty that the apartment that L.A. ``confidential consultant'' Charley Case has agreed to housesit will come complete with the corpse of his absent landlord's sister, that a trail of corpses will follow, along with the likelihood of an emerging land-development scam getting tied in to some highly placed politicos. Forget about following the plot, which unreels as madly as if you'd hitched a ride on somebody else's nightmare. Just sit back and enjoy (if that's your fancy) the catastrophic landscape in this third (but first to appear here) case for Charley Case.