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By Jon L. Breen
Show business has long been a favorite criminous setting, and in recent years more mysteries than ever have explored the worlds of film, stage, television, music, magic, stand-up comedy, and other categories of performance. Prolific anthologist Robert J. Randisi’s Hollywood and Crime (Pegasus, $25) gathers original stories by such formidable writers as Michael Connelly, Bill Pronzini, Terence Faherty, Stuart M. Kaminsky, and Dick Lochte. Among those with the strongest entertainment industry backgrounds are “Murderlized” by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clem-ens, a fact-based 1930s tale in which Moe Howard of the Three Stooges investigates the mysterious death of former stage partner Ted Healy; Robert S. Levinson’s “And the Winner Is,” about the 1960 Academy Awards, gangster Mickey Cohen, and the bitter rivalry of columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella O. Parsons; and best of all, “Jack Webb’s Star,” Lee Goldberg’s hilarious contemporary tale of a struggling TV writer, his commercial actress wife, a traffic school led by an unfunny stand-up comic, and Joe Friday’s star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. The novels considered below explore other corners of the entertainment world past and present.
**** Christa Faust: Money Shot, Hard Case Crime, $6.99. Former porn movie actress Angel Dare, who now operates an “adult modeling agency,” should never have agreed to a one-time comeback that leaves her battered, humiliated, and on the run from a murder charge. Her story of sex, violence, and Spillane-style revenge is leavened by humanity, occasional humor, sex-industry insights, faultless pace, and eloquent style. Some will be repelled by the subject matter, but to those remaining, this is highly recommended. The dedication to the late paperback icon Richard S. Prather is quite appropriate.
*** Betty Webb: Desert Cut, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. Lena Jones, a Scottsdale private eye with the personal demons and mysterious history so common in the current market, appears for the fifth time in this disturbing novel. Most of her income comes from her job as technical advisor to a television crime drama. Thus, when she and her documentarian boyfriend find the body of a little girl while scouting locations for a film about Geronimo, she is able to take on the case, possibly connected to those of other missing girls, without a paying client. While the extreme child abuse at the center of the plot is painfully believable and buttressed by an author note and bibliography, one hopes the jaundiced view of TV series production is exaggerated. Webb is a solid pro who knows how to draw in and keep the reader.
*** Toni L. P. Kelner: Without Mercy, Five Star, $25.95. In the first of a promising new series, Boston entertainment writer Tilda Harper, specialist in where-are-they-now stories, looks into suspicious deaths among the cast members of the 1970s sitcom Kissing Cousins while trying to find the vanished Mercy, the program’s goth teenager. Bright dialogue, engaging characters, and a humorous view of fannish obsession support a whodunit plot that is nicely managed though unclued in the classical sense.
*** David Fulmer: The Blue Door, Harcourt, $25. The author of several mysteries centered on early twentieth-century jazz turns to the Philadelphia music scene of 1962 as boxer turned private eye in training Eddie Cero looks into the disappearance three years earlier of rising rhythm-and-blues star Johnny Pope. Almost everyone, including Johnny’s beautiful sister, wants him to leave it alone. Though the payoff isn’t quite as good as the problem, characters and background make this one a winner. Eddie’s relationship with employer and mentor Sal Giambroni may remind some of Fredric Brown’s 1947 Edgar winner The Fabulous Clipjoint.
*** Robert S. Levinson: In the Key of Death, Five Star, $25.95. Record producer Clyde (Mr. Magic) Davenport so resents being dropped by the popular music giants he made famous that he is systematically killing them off. LAPD cop Josh Wainwright, whose singer wife may have been one of Davenport’s victims, is determined to avenge her death. EQMM favorite Levinson manages to have both a pernicious known villain and a whodunit in an intricately plotted and suspenseful thriller that makes maximum use of his music industry expertise.
*** John Harvey: Gone to Ground, Harcourt, $25. Occasional excerpts from the script of a 1950s British film noir hint that the murder of a gay academic arose from his research into the female star, who died mysteriously and whose family resists cooperation. Most interesting feature of the first book-length case for police detectives Will Grayson and Helen Walker is Harvey’s depiction of the triangle, benign and friendly but potentially dangerous, of male detective, wife, and female partner.
*** Bill Moody: Shades of Blue, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. When Bay Area jazz pianist Evan Horne, making his sixth appearance, inherits the home and possessions of his musical mentor Calvin Hughes, some pieces of old handwritten sheet music and a photograph of Hughes with Miles Davis and a baby carriage send the sleuthing jazzman on a quest for the dead man’s secrets. The unconventional and seldom predictable plot takes a while to get fully in gear, but Moody, himself a professional jazz drummer, quickly involves the reader with both the characters and the music. Included as incidental characters are real-life drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Ron Carter.
** Susan Goodwill: Little Shop of Murders, Midnight Ink, $13.95. Kate London’s amateur theatre in Mudd Lake, Michigan mounts the musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors, complete with hard-to-control man-eating plant. During the town’s annual Sausage Festival, an elderly bathrobe-wearing bank robber proves to be a boyfriend of Kate’s Aunt Kitty, a former ’50s-era B-movie actress. Representing the comic cozy at its lightest and slapstickiest, this may satisfy some fans of the type but won’t win many new converts.
** Don Bruns: St. Bart Breakdown, Oceanview, $24.95. In his fourth appearance, rock journalist Mick Sever flies to the titular island to interview legendary record producer Danny Murtz, a drug-addled sociopath whose female friends have a habit of vanishing or turning up dead. The island and journalistic backgrounds are effective enough, but the characters and plot are less engaging than hoped.
ADDENDUM: By bizarre coincidence, the very day I learned of the death of my friend and literary hero Ed Hoch, I found in my mailbox the seventeenth (and certainly not last) edition of the loose-leaf Edward D. Hoch Bibliography (Moffatt House, Box 4456, Downey, CA 90241-1456), covering the years 1955 to early 2008. Edited by June M. Moffatt and Francis M. Nevins, and including extensive introductory material by Marvin Lachman, it is a testament to the extraordinary career of a writer who first broke into print with “Village of the Dead” in the December 1955 issue of one of the last surviving mystery pulps, Famous Detective Stories; had been a frequent contributor to EQMM for nearly a decade before beginning his historic unbroken run of appearances from May 1973 to the present; created no less than 28 mystery series; and was one of the last and greatest practitioners of classical Golden-Age-style detective fiction. Apart from the hundreds of meticulously crafted stories that form his literary legacy, Ed Hoch was loved and admired in the mystery field for his good humor, kindness, generosity to other writers, and wisdom. The memories and the stories live on.
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