BOOK REVIEW / NOVEL : Revealing One Family’s Dark Secrets and a Killer or Two : DEAD MAN’S DANCE <i> by Robert Ferrigno</i> ; Putnam $23.95, 400 pages

“He wasn’t a dancer,� writes Robert Ferrigno about a man named Quinn, the troubled hero of “Dead Man’s Dance,� “but he had some moves.�

Quinn is an investigative reporter with an unbelievably cushy job at an upscale magazine, but when we meet him, he’s a ticking time bomb of dysfunction, “hot tempered, raw as a blister, more comfortable in the company of criminals than cognoscenti,� all of which means that Quinn and his moves fit comfortably into the conventions of the postmodern hard-boiled mystery.

For example, Quinn is utterly unsentimental and even unscrupulous when it comes to chasing down a hot story, but he comes across as distinctly sappy when he dotes on his young daughter and moons after his ex-wife. And he is still working out a lot of unfinished business about the mother who abandoned him in childhood, and the stepfather, a prominent Orange County judge, who keeps him at a safe distance.

Then, too, he can’t quite seem to work out his problems with Jen, the aloof young woman who shares his bed, a photojournalist with a hot body but a hard heart. He’s pushing 40, she’s strictly Generation X, and the relationship is rendered even more volatile when she draws the not-so-kindly attention of a wealthy benefactor named Ellis Fontayne. Quinn implores her to marry him, but he’s hard-pressed to compete with a rich and influential attorney who offers himself as her patron.

All of these flash points go blooey at the same time when a figure from Quinn’s distant past shows up--a former dancer named Joe Steps, newly released from prison and using a wheelchair--and, not quite coincidentally, Quinn’s stepfather ends up dead.

The tormented Quinn sets himself the task of searching out the murderer of his stepfather, but he soon finds himself drawn into a much deeper and darker mystery that harks all the way back to his dimly remembered childhood. Exactly who is Joe Steps after all--Quinn’s long-lost father? The murderer of Quinn’s stepfather? Or is Joe himself a victim?

As it turns out, “Dead Man’s Dance� is driven less by Quinn and his quest to unravel his dark family secrets than by a couple of weirdly engaging young killers, Rick and Hugo, who embody a certain stylish malevolence that sets them apart from the usual gang of suspects in murder mysteries.

Rick is a cheerful psychopathic killer who really wants to be a hairdresser: “I pity your pH balance,� he tells one victim. And Hugo is an ascetic and a philosopher, “a walking shadow, marooned between life and death.� Together, they’ve embarked on a mission of murder that draws them ever closer to Quinn and his various significant others.

Ferrigno sets his story in Orange County, but it’s a treacherous version of otherwise familiar terrain, ranging from the gate-guarded sanctuaries of the privileged and powerful to the “surf-trash� bars where young skinheads stoke themselves up before embarking on gay-bashing expeditions in Laguna Beach.

“Beneath its crust of glamour and wealth, Orange County bubbled with resentment,� writes Ferrigno, “a poisonous stew of rich against poor, color against color, and everyone against the new immigrants on the block.�

He renders the otherwise familiar Chandler-esque figures of “Dead Man’s Dance� in the garb, the argot and the emotional baggage of the ‘90s--everyone in the book seems edgy, wired, afflicted by hungers that cannot be sated.

“What’s wrong?� asks Jen after a lovemaking session in the bathtub with Quinn. “I always feel this . . . undercurrent of frustration inside you.�

“Too much talk radio,� he quips. “I’ll cut back. Promise.�

“Dead Man’s Dance� remains distinctly noir as we follow Quinn across a deceptively sunny landscape, as if the sun that burns so brightly in the sky over Orange County is bringing just about everyone to a fast boil of ambition and betrayal.

“I think I radiate . . . a dangerous, very bankable intensity, like Andre Agassi or Eddie Vedder,� says Rick, the preening killer. “Once I get my own salon, I bet I get some serious hair care and makeup endorsements.�

Even at the obligatory moment of revelation, when Ferrigno puts the key players on a boat at sea and allows them to explain all the mysteries to each other, “Dead Man’s Dance� is still humming with a certain unresolved tension that is somehow more intriguing than the neat solutions that the author feels compelled to offer up.