The pitch for "The Diviners," Rick Moody's latest novel, might go something like this: Imagine a novel with a plot like a soap opera about the development of a movie -- no, make that a miniseries -- about the history of diviners, based on a nonexistent novel written by a made-up woman, which, when it finally does get written (does it ever get written?), takes its inspiration from the mumblings of an elderly Brooklynite, who, caught in the throes of alcohol-induced nostalgia, regales the employees of her daughter's film production company with stories of her divining ancestors. Toss in a lot of casual sex; a wayward band of teenagers who, led by a disgruntled social worker, firebomb a Krispy Kreme doughnut franchise; a woman who suffers a mysterious brick to the head while walking in New York City; and a group of sensitive detectives who, while she's in a coma, become engrossed with her diary. A Botox party, a bike-messenger race, a Supreme Court Justice who -- hang it all! -- wants to write screenplays. Agents, movie stars, heads of networks, publicists. Huns, Sikhs, Mormons. This book has it all.

As he's proven in many fine short stories, as well as in his second novel, "The Ice Storm," Moody has a knack for getting close to the center of truths by writing all the way around them. He loves litanies, adores run-on sentences. In "The Ice Storm," for example, he sustains a fever pitch of narrative, heaping the story upon his reader.

Rosa Elisabetta Meandro, in insubstantial light, entrails in flames. Rosa Elisabetta of the hammertoe, Rosa Elisabetta of the corns. Rosa Elisabetta of the afflictions. She has hinted about the nature of her sufferings to certain persons up the block, certain persons on Eleventh Street, Brooklyn. Emilia, whose son sells raviolis, for example. She has whispered to Emilia about the colitis. She has indicated problems relating to her gallbladder. Stones. Also headaches. These headaches begin with visitations, with rainbows, celestial light, an inability to remember numbers."

The novel continues in this way, swooping intimately from character to character. Rosa, it is revealed, is the mother of Vanessa, head of Means of Production, a fledgling film company. As vicious as she is ambitious, Vanessa is desperate to get as close as possible to the industry's next big thing. By way of a few mix-ups, the staff at Means of Production -- and eventually the entire entertainment industry -- becomes frothy-mouthed over "The Diviners," a script that doesn't exist. The world, thus fueled by hype, is set in motion.

Simply put, "The Diviners" is a mess. Sometimes it's a fine mess, sometimes not. Moody surrenders too much substance to an unwieldy plot, and his characters, many of them submerged in the shallow waters of show biz, never wander far enough from their stereotypes. His men philander, and his women, when placed in their vicinity, never refuse them. Mysteries go unsolved, characters disappear for no reason, and though the novel is set in the chad-happy days following the 2000 election, this context never really bears fruit. On occasion Moody's irony-heavy wordsmithing wears so thin he sounds like a seventh-grader struggling to make minimum word-count for an English assignment: "They're staying at the Luxor because the Luxor, with its pyramid and its sphinx, is designed to resemble the legal-tender dollar bill of the United States of America."

In fact, "The Diviners" reads best if you can forget it's a novel. Homing in on his characters, Moody tends to tell their whole story at once. In this way, swaths of writing are saved: When Moody goes off message, characters blossom suddenly before us, saved by their smallness and humanity. Rev. Duffy, after years of cheerful ministering, finds himself in a bad state while preparing his sermon. He types: "You may be surprised to learn that it has been nearly two decades since I felt any certainty about the existence of the Almighty."

Jaspreet, a disturbed Sikh boy, thoroughly unprepared for the social circumstances in which he finds himself, imagines the rest of the world laughing at jokes he doesn't understand. Here Moody exposes the entirety of his pain, as if with one dose of bright light: "At night, in bed, he can remember all of this, in bed, and it doesn't matter if his mother is beautiful and his father is strong and drives a fancy car, it only matters that he doesn't understand the jokes. The feeling is like wanting to break something over his head."

People thirst in Moody's world. What he seems to be saying here is what he said so eloquently in "The Ice Storm": It's thirsting itself that is our punishment and our reward. What's missing in "The Diviners" is the subtlety and depth he's achieved in his previous work, as well as the unabashed empathy for his characters. Die-hard fans might find that this latest offering satisfies as a delightful, if voluminous, excursion. Knowing he can do better, the rest of us will just have to hunker down and wait for Moody's next big storm to blow through.

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