Was Einstein Poisoned? : THE MURDER OF ALBERT EINSTEIN, <i> By Todd Gitlin (Farrar Straus Giroux: $22; 285 pp.)</i>

What if Albert Einstein had been murdered? What if one of the greatest minds of this century, the man credited with tearing the veil from the mystery of physics, had not died relatively peacefully in a hospital in Princeton in 1955, but had been poisoned?

Such is the premise of Todd Gitlin’s first novel, “The Murder of Albert Einstein,” and it opens a Pandora’s box of questions: Who would have done such a thing to a benign 76-year-old gentleman? Why would they have taken such a desperate measure? Could the crime be detected after almost 40 years? Who would want to solve such a crime? And why?

Well, good; Gitlin has got us wondering, and his tale is full of twists and turnings and one major inversion. He’s had a lot of fun with his choice of narrator, one Ms. Margo Ross, television producer/personality, “a woman in her transitional forties.” Margo has achieved “medium-magnitude star”-dom in her role as a television journalist on In Depth, a weekly news program a la 60 Minutes or 20/20. Her work and her television world at powerful Consolidated Communications serve as a heady medium for our unfolding mystery.

Gitlin is at his very best in the scenes involving the media, the power positioning among the bosses, the preparation of Margo’s show on an aging rock star, even the presentation of the resulting program. The characters give off a hyperkinetic charge as they cut and paste the many facets of the show; it’s authentic and exciting.

Margo has done features on designer drugs, pesticides, a girl chess champion and an arms merchant, and she’s jaded in a way that we would almost call hard-boiled in a more traditional thriller. She thinks in voice-overs. She is a camcorder in a skirt. She knows that on her show “Segue is power. Continuity isn’t born, it’s cut. God the Editor stitched to get this continuity, too. Just look at the stop-and-go rhythm of Genesis, basting the world together, barely.”

Into Margo’s successful Manhattan life comes her old mentor Harry Kramer, a charismatic, plot-sniffing radical, also the author of the famous novel “Fix,” which became a generation’s all-purpose allegory about corruption, conspiracy and power. Harry has an urgent story idea for Margo: “There’s been a murder.”

Almost 40 years ago.

As cold as the clues may be, Harry and Margo begin a circuitous trek that involves several trips to Princeton, alleged murderee Albert Einstein’s stomping ground; they run across several shady characters, some with accents, a left-winger, a right-winger . . . and the story heats up.

Of course, exploring Einstein’s demise is going to require more exposition than would the average demise, and Gitlin acquits himself fairly well as a first novelist. To set up his story, he needs to plant these seeds: physics, particle theory, Neils Bohr, wave theory, Heisenberg’s principle, Teller, Oppenheimer, relativity theory, Einstein’s last days, and unified-field theory, as well as some obligatory philosophy and religion. He manages this via lengthy interviews with three of Einstein’s colleagues who are currently players in the mystery. There is a good deal of this stage setting, but once the furniture is in place, the story comes together to form a bona-fide thriller--conspiracy, mayhem and betrayal.

Harry and Margo are a kind of dynamic duo, their dialogue a chain-reaction repartee, sharp and extremely well done. They both speak in epigrams at times, pithy and on target, as canny as television wiseguys. Harry’s famous credo is “History is an unsolved crime.” He sees a conspiracy in every coincidence. And Margo’s might be: “Necessity into virtue.” She does what she can. Their involvement with each other as the case deepens is also a breath of fresh air, since the dew is off both of them. Middle-aged lovers trying to solve a crime. Or at least get it on the air.

The dealings at Consolidated Communications, an empire whose motto is “We Take In the World,” are entertaining indeed, as Margo’s boss Burke Gilman and their ultimate chieftain Sir Colin McShane--a man with a $2-million desk--are drawn into the web of intrigue. Margo fights for a chance to follow her (and Harry’s) story, and for the chance to get it on In Depth. When they get the go- ahead, they have less than a week and no solid leads. As Burke Gilman says, “Anyone can be right, the point is to be fast.”

There begins a real rush, a beat-the-clock marathon of gathering the data necessary for a television documentary. The other shows competing for the story are titled Human Interest, Wanted and People This Week. Gilman has a sturdy understanding of the media. Ross finds all the evidence tantalizing, if thin, but she knows how to wring emotion if not logic out of amazing graphics, quick cuts and soundtrack, and her own speed becomes conviction. This is where the book is best, the thriller becomes thrilling and dramatic.

One of the central themes in the novel is power and its use. The book starts with a look at nuclear power and the possibility of a unified-field theory, a single key to the universe. But Gitlin’s suspense drama goes beyond that to explore the power of information and the manipulation of the media. As Sir Colin McShane says, “You know what actually unifies the field? Television unifies the field.”