The sole rollerblading courier in San Francisco, messenger Chet Griffin finds himself trapped in a deadly struggle to save his own life after he innocently delivers an already opened envelope containing a computer disk with billion-dollar information to a ruthless customer. A first novel. If you thought Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock on a bus was thrilling, wait until you meet Chet Griffin, the hero of Joe Quirk's first novel, The Ultimate Rush . Chet makes his living as the only rollerblading courier in San Francisco, a job that entails screaming down steep hills at high speeds; dodging automobiles, pedestrians, and streetcars; and delivering, among other things, highly illegal stock information all around town. Enter the Chinese Mafia who, for reasons we won't get into here, consider Griffin a threat; suddenly our hero-on-wheels is in mortal danger from more than just a traffic accident. Targeted by a gang of Chinese killers, Griffin and his girlfriend, Ho, careen through a series of high-speed chases and narrow escapes before finally turning the tables on their tormentors in a bloody, but highly original, finale. What makes The Ultimate Rush such a hoot is the way Quirk piles one thriller-genre cliché after another onto his plot, then puts his own quirky twist on them. Hackers, skateboarders, crooked cops, and Chinese assassins keep Chet and Ho hopping and the reader happily going along for the wild ride from first page to last. Quirk's first novel is a slick mystery-suspense tale set on Rollerblades in San Francisco, city of steep streets. Chet Griffin is a Rollerblading package courier selected for some very lucrative and illegal deliveries. When people start getting killed and Chet is charged, he returns to hacking?he's already got a criminal record for it?to clear himself, friend Denny, and girlfriend Ho (for Ho Chi Minh). They end up in a three-way shootout with Italian and Chinese gangsters and the S.F. police, who are portrayed here as inert, cowardly, and corrupt. The plot is the weakest part of this title, not too original and hard to swallow in parts, but that's forgivable. Read Quirk for his characters and dialog, which crackles throughout and carries the story even when the narrative is strained. What's the "ultimate rush"? A clue: it's neither Rollerblading nor hacking. An entertaining work for mature readers.?Robert C. Moore, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, Framingham, Mass. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. A profane, slangy, ludicrously violent ``roller punk'' thriller that's as uneven as the slippery San Francisco streets, sewers, and cyberspace it revels in. With a tattoo of Ralph Waldo Emerson on one shoulder and a boa constrictor in his parlor, Chet Griffin is a sex-starved slacker addicted to sugar highs and the heartstopping adrenalin thrills derived from sleepless nights of computer hacking and restless days as the city's only in-line skating message courier. His low-paying, high-anxiety job helps him forget his crack-addicted tattoo-artist younger brother Bobby, his dead parents, his supersuccessful, wheelchair-bound, software-genius roommate Denny, and their bass-playing lesbian skateboard punk queen chum, Ho Chi Minh Pixie, with whom Griffin is hopelessly infatuated. When first-novelist Quirk stays on the street with his breezily insouciant cast of postmodern, fin-de-sicle bohemians, his narrative sputters along with hilariously manic Hunter Thompsonlike word-spray. But, alas, the plot must thicken: Griffin's sleazy boss, Mel Corlini (his sister is an equally sleazy police lieutenant), starts paying him under the table to run computer discs between a prestigious investment- banking firm and a group of Chinese and Italian crack smugglers. Griffin asks no questions until a fellow courier is gunned down in the financial district by a platoon of Armani-clad hoodlums named after Star Trek characters. Griffin's own escape is followed by a absurd rooftop-to-BART-stopchase, the first of many minutely choreographed cinematic action scenes wholly lacking in menace. A kinky romance blossoms between Griffin and Ho as Griffin applies his hacker skills in playing far too many bad guys (including a sadistic cyber-smasher named MP Phred) against one another. Newcomer Quirk's feverish plotting runs away with an otherwise funny, stylish tale of overeducated, underappreciated, urban bottom-dwellers using youthful stamina and high-tech toys to befuddle a dull, grown-up world. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. The exciting thing about The Ultimate Rush , a witty, skillfully paced action thriller, the first novel by Joe Quirk, is that it takes ... background abstractions and dumps them firmly in the foreground. -- The New York Times Book Review, Bruno Maddox Joe Quirk grew up in New Jersey, went to college in Providence, studied law in St. Louis, and now lives in Berkeley. He never became a lawyer, but has worked as a nanny and a candy s