FACE DOWN IN THE PARK

Foglia and Richards team up once again (1 Ragged Road, 1997), this time for a forgettable suspenser about amnesia. Just when you thought the “a-ailment” was safely secured in the Department of Puerile Plots, here’s the bashed-in-the-head protagonist of Face Down in the Park. No memory, no identification, of course. Lucky for him, though, plucky, bighearted aerobics instructor Tina Ruffo is in the vicinity. He literally staggers into her; she whisks him off the mean New York City streets, then gets him to a hospital, where he’s diagnosed with Global Transient Amnesia. But not to worry, the docs tell him. True, GTA can last months, but bits and pieces of his past might well come back in minutes. The first thing that comes back is his name, Brent Stevens. The why of the bashing, however, remains in limbo. A garden variety NYC mugging? Not on your Knickerbocker, since while still in the hospital Brent has narrowly avoided another violent episode. Clearly, he’d better find some answers. Tina pitches in with the sleuthing. A possible clue is the hotel key, as well as a train ticket, in one of Brent’s pockets. The key leads the pair from Geoffrey Reed, viperous Hollywood agent, to movie idols Jennifer Osborne and Christopher Knight—and eventually to certain dark secrets, the kind convertible into sleazy black-and-white photos, the kind bad guys might kill for. Or at the least consider head-bash—worthy. Meantime, the train ticket leads to a small upstate town, where Brent Stevens discovers he once was Steve Carroll, someone with certain dark secrets of his own. Now, finally, cut to the glitz of a major movie premiere for resolution, redemption, and the requisite Hollywood-like ending. Foglia is a Broadway director, Richards a former cultural scene columnist for the Washington Post, but the inside stuff they dish here seems more warmed-over than hot.