The High Price of Membership

THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB

By Meg Gardiner

Dutton. 355 pp. $24.95

Now and then a book comes along that strikes me as less a novel than a clever little contraption designed to seize readers, extract $25, punch their various buttons and eventually release them with a dazed look in their eyes and, ideally, a smile on their faces. "The Dirty Secrets Club" is such a book. It's slick commercial entertainment, propelled by a plot that, while preposterous, will intrigue some readers. In devising her story and characters, the author has given us a veritable checklist of the elements that go into a certain sort of popular fiction. That the book works as well as it does is largely because Meg Gardiner, an American who now lives in London, writes smart, lively prose. I wish she'd applied her talents to a more plausible story, but London's expensive these days, and a writer's gotta do what she's gotta do.

Start with the plot. Some fancy folks in San Francisco have formed a secret society called the Dirty Secrets Club. To join, you must confess to something terrible you've done in your past. Gardiner dances around the question of why anyone would make such a confession and run the risk of legal action or blackmail: They just want to blab. In a bizarre opening scene, one aspiring club member, a star receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, offers up his bare backside for a whipping by a riding crop -- he wants to be punished for something naughty he did in college. But the crux of the plot is this: Someone is killing members of this club or possibly driving them to suicide by threatening to reveal their sins. One of the first to die is a hard-charging young assistant U.S. attorney who rather improbably was one of the club's founders. Clearly, someone must stop the fiend who is killing these repentant sinners, and that leads to our next Major Plot Element, the Heroine.

Her name is Jo Beckett. She's a forensic psychologist who's been called in to determine if that assistant U.S. attorney might have killed herself. She's also smart, attractive, 30-something and designed to appeal to the female readers who are this novel's most likely consumers. Jo is a widow. She and her late husband, while on a medical rescue mission, were in a helicopter crash, and she is haunted by the belief that she might have saved him. However, in the course of her investigation into the club murders, Jo is reunited with a manly but sensitive fellow named Gabe, a military man who's also in the business of saving lives, and there are hints that romance may once again light up Jo's life.

Another of the book's selling points is that it is set in and around that most beautiful of cities, San Francisco, which Gardiner, who once practiced law in California, describes with skill and affection. Even San Francisco's earthquakes figure in the story: Jo was almost killed in one when she was a child, another one erupts in the novel's opening scene, and a third occurs near the novel's end. A thriller must also have villains, of course, and Gardiner gives us two major ones: Most of the killing is done by a ruthless thug regrettably known as Skunk, who is manipulated by a shadowy figure who has a serious grudge against the Dirty Secrets Club.

Popular fiction thrives on children and dogs. Gardiner offers up two little girls. Jo and her husband were trying to save the first one when the helicopter crashed. The second is Gabe's daughter, Sophie, also known as Cricket. These little ones inspire a good deal of talk about Mr. Potato Head, Bratz and the like. Instead of a dog, Gardiner provides a monkey, Mr. Peebles, who's owned by her nut-case neighbor. In one climactic scene, Gardiner manages to bring together almost all of her plot points: For 24 pages, the two villains chase Jo and Sophie through the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night, just after an earthquake, with the monkey scampering around trying to be useful. I didn't notice a kitchen sink anywhere, but a refrigerator does fall on someone when a building collapses. At the end of this epic chase, good-guy Gabe is there to pull Jo and Sophie out of the rubble. Are we having fun yet?

Gardiner offers up nice writing here and there: The helicopter crash is well done, as is a panoramic view of San Francisco after an earthquake. Other times, she gets carried away: "The pain in her leg fired off like a Roman candle, so sharp she almost heard it hiss into the sky." But it's unlikely that many people will worry about the writing. Either you buy this mildly titillating tale of riding crops, revenge and dirty secrets or you don't. I didn't, but that's not to say others might not think it a fine companion for a day at the beach.