JINX

A cast-of-thousands debut in which the new sports analyst at KSDG, Kit Powell, watches in horror as one of the owners of the Sharks, the pro-football team recently moved from Galveston to San Diego, plummets from his skybox. Pushed, perhaps? While retired Sharks player Hawk Havilland, who suffered a career-ending injury and is now doing the team's p.r., bemoans the team's ""jinx""--13 well-publicized accidents and/or scandals in recent years--Barry's estranged wife, Jennifer, who has ties to mafioso DiCenza, is murdered in her shower. Moreover, truly naughty pictures surface of Jen with a team quarterback. The more Kit noses around, the more she learns about two factions--those who want the team to return to Galveston, and those who are opposed to it. There will be a disappearance, another murder plan, telephone threats to Kit (and a burgeoning romance between her and investigating cop Nick Strummer) before the killer plunges off a conveniently crumbling cliff. The author's football expertise is nil (she calls the point-after conversion a ""field goal""), but she's quite disarming about TV, its stars, and its newswriters. Still: too many people, too skimpy a plot.