pAfter a campaign filled with mud-slinging, accusations, and corruption, Billy Dale-San Francisco's most cunning, most successful political consultant-steers former police chief Jack Callahan to a sweet victory in an underdog race for mayor on Election Night, 1991. But the city's two daily newspapers are not about to let Callahan off the hook. Both papers lost plenty of political clout by backing the incumbent. As the newspapers battle for control of the new mayor and Dale fights to keep his City Hall power intact, other forces-from rival newspaper publishers to wannabe power brokers-tangle things up with bribery, deceit, and hardball tactics. San Francisco news veteran Joe Strupp's The Crookedest Street weaves a two-year tale of political power-grabbing, backroom deals, shady operatives-even murder-peopled with the kind of colorful and eccentric characters that have run San Francisco since its Barbary Coast days. p