ENTERTAINMENT

John Darnton, veteran New York Times reporter, has written a novel that, against heavy odds, works supremely well on two levels.

Not so surprisingly, given Mr. Darnton's previous accomplishments in the realm of fiction (Neanderthal and The Darwin Conspiracy), his new novel is a suspenseful murder mystery with nary a flaw in the plotting or the pacing.

The heavy odds involve writing a murder mystery that is also a satire on an entire way of life: the life of American newspapers in the modern era. If not unique, the combination is at the very least highly unusual.

The murders occur in the building housing the fictional New York Globe, a thinly disguised version of the real-life New York Times. First, one of the highest-ranking editors is found dead in the middle of the newsroom. Murders of two other prominent newspaper staff members follow. Dedicated investigative reporter Jude Hurley and New York City Police Department homicide detective Priscilla Bollingsworth take on the investigation. The suspects in the first murder number in the hundreds, because so many newsroom employees despised the editor for his mean streak and his determination to supplement serious reporting with fluffy features.

The satire permeates every page. While a few of the reporters, editors and members of the business staff shine as ethical and competent, most come across as incompetent and-or lazy and-or buffoonish. They also tend toward cynicism and insensitivity, valuing a circulation-boosting multiple murder story over the pain felt by flesh-and-blood survivors of the victims.

Sad to say, real-life journalists will find the types created by Mr. Darnton recognizable, albeit sometimes exaggerated for effect. On the brighter side, nonjournalists willing to delve beneath the satire will receive a useful education in the byways of newspapering.

The unforgiving deadlines destroy the personal lives of many, many journalists. In the novel, Hurley cannot please the woman he loves deeply because work interferes at the most inopportune moments in a calling operating according to the motto "deadline every minute."

Especially poignant, and instructive, is Hurley's professional dilemma about how much information to share with Bollingsworth, given the standard state of press-police antagonism. Hurley needs Bollingsworth's inside view to write a compelling story on new developments.

Bollingsworth needs Hurley's knowledge of the newsroom culture and the individual players in the culture so divergent from the paramilitary police way. They turn out to constitute a winning team.

Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

John Darnton

(Knopf, $24.95)