The Soap Opera Slaughters

The plot of the popular daytime soap opera "Riverday" was melodramatic to be sure, but, as detective Hilary Quayle and her sometime lover Gene discover, it's not nearly, as tangled -- or as deadly -- as the drama its stars are acting out in real lifts.

First, the unclad body of the show's head writer is found on the street in front of the television studio. Then the director yells, "Action!" and the leading villainess is poisoned, appropriately enough, in the middle of a deathbed scene. And ...