LIBEL THE DEAD

Young editor Mike Lindenthal, of N.Y.C.'s slick, sophisticated Beyond magazine, finds himself in trouble after an article he'd commissioned about L.A.'s much idolized TV talk host Bangor Laudicek brings the threat of a libel suit. To head it off, Beyond's legal superman Bob Struiker decides that he and Mike will fly to L.A. to meet with Laudicek, his lawyer, and author of the piece, Trilla McGuffy. Photographer Burley Moore and others from the mag's West Coast office float around the edges, supplying gossip on Trilla's druggy past and her long-standing vendetta against Bangor. The hotel suite meeting, attended also by Bangor's handsome, high-strung wife Pamela, seems to end in another triumph for Struiker, but in its aftermath Bangor is dead—fallen or pushed from the suite's balcony. Mike, meanwhile, is in thrall to the gorgeous, mercurial Trilla, but manages to pull himself together as the absurd plot behind Bangor's death comes to light in a lumbering finale. The author's crisp, often luminous style—so deftly used in his debut novel The Leaf Boats 1991)—turns bloated and florid here; his L.A. Lorelei is just another mixed-up blond with intellectual pretensions in a cumbersome story with the unreal air of a big-budget, high-gloss movie. Readable, sporadically intriguing, but disappointing.