EQMM 2008-06 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Reviews: THE JURY BOX 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. Clemens, 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 AcademyAwards, 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.

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