Pitched a little to the wacky of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen's shaggy-dog comic mysteries are borne of his experience as a columnist for the Miami Herald, where he presides over a city so corrupt that the dead periodically vote in local elections. It's only natural that Hiaasen's 25 years at the paper have turned him into a cynic, but his writing remains brisk and lighthearted, as if the only healthy way to deal with the overwhelming rot is to spin it into offbeat comedy. There's real anger buried under the genial tone of Hiaasen's engaging ninth novel, Basket Case, a rock 'n' roll whodunit informed by his bitterness over the newspaper business, which has been swallowed whole by corporate chains that favor "reader-friendly" homogeneity over hard-hitting journalism. Not coincidentally, Hiaasen's personal rancor has prompted him to break from his usual third-person narrative style and get inside the head of another cynical newspaperman of the old school. His hero, Jack Tagger, was once a hotshot investigative reporter for a small South Florida daily, but when the family paper was sold to a chain, he was swiftly demoted to obituaries for insulting his new bosses at a stockholder's meeting. Kept on a short leash by his much younger editor, a high-strung corporate climber who couldn't compose a sentence to save her life, Tagger has been made painfully aware that his byline will never see the front page again. Always a cagey reporter, he quietly sniffs out a big story when he looks into the accidental drowning of James Bradley Stomarti, better known as Jimmy Stoma, the former frontman of an '80s band called Jimmy And The Slut Puppies. The victim's opportunistic wife, a Courtney Love-type who goes under the stage name Cleo Rio, claims her husband died while scuba diving in murky waters in the Bahamas. But inconsistencies in her story, in addition to a botched autopsy and some curiously prescient song lyrics, suggest foul play. Hiaasen's decision to use first-person minimizes his weaknesses and plays to his strengths, because he only has to know as little about rock music and as much about journalism as his hero. Though Hiaasen commissioned the lyrics for Stoma's title song from his friend Warren Zevon (who plans to record a version for his next album), he loses his way in the contemporary pop world, which only adds a minor dash of flavor to his straight-ahead mystery plotting. But Basket Case excels in the newsroom, where Hiaasen's resourceful hero knows exactly how to negotiate space, sidestep his conniving editors, and keep his story from being shuttled to another section. In a changing industry, journalists like Jack Tagger are disposable commodities, but Hiaasen delights in allowing him to burn a few bridges on the way out.