KNIGHT AND DAY

He's Jerry Knight, the vain, left-baiting host of an all-night radio talk show. She's Jane Day, neurotic, bleeding-heart liberal reporter for the Washington Post. And when this oil-and-water pair come together to solve the murder of a top-flight environmentalist beaten to death on his way home from his grilling on Jerry's Night Talker show, we're talking major, major cute. Was Curtis Davies Davenport, of People to Save the Air, really the victim of an ordinary mugger, as Detective A.L. Jones contends? Or was he killed by Senator Barton Jacobsen, the presidential hopeful he'd accused of bribery in Jane's page-one story? Or by Jacobsen's chief of staff, Jack VanDyke (an ``operative in the mold of Lee Atwater'')? Or by Pat Howell, p.r. flack cum society coke-dealer? Or by her lover and alibi Kurt Voss, lobbyist for the chemical giant that Davenport said was paying Jacobsen off? Or by environmental guerrilla Drake Dennis, self-styled Commander Doom of the Sunshine Brigade? Since there's no way to tell, how about putting all the suspects live on Night Talker and hammering them until somebody cracks in time for Jane to make the deadline for the final edition? James Carville and Mary Matalan as Mr. and Mrs. North. Nessen (The Hour, 1984, etc.) and USA Today correspondent Neuman have cobbled together the perfect mystery for people who do their reading with remote control in hand.