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.