Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
Much of Hollywood detests Mark's boss producer Dexter Morton, who enjoys their hatred and flaunts it by inviting those who find him an abomination to parties he host because they always come. The morning after Dexter's latest bashing bash, Mark finds his boss dead in the swimming pool. The police feel Mark is the leading suspect though Charity James, the former girlfriend of Mark's studio peer is also high on the casting list. Mark and Charity begin seeking the truth from a clichéd Hollywood B movie with too many subplots to make it on the screen, but this is real life and a happy ending is not necessarily in the script.
Using the 1994 earthquake to set the stage, Terrill Lee Lankford provides an insider amateur sleuth novel with a pinch of a police procedural tale. The story line uses real events in the background; yet the prime thread is low key as Dexter's struggles with his boss (dead and alive) and his lack of success. This is similar to Jackie Collins' delightful Hollywood novels, but with an emphasis on the likeable with no empathy antihero's feeling sorry for himself woes as he faces middle age with nothing but police trouble on his filmography.