Plastic lady detective Hilary Quayle and her plotzing Watson, Gene, are again involved in a mystery that only a show-biz cultist could love. Show-biz cultists like, for instance, The Sons of the Desert, a real-life group (author Kaye belongs) that worships ""Stan"" and ""Babe"" and parodies, not very cleverly, other fraternal organizations. At a Sons banquet, a universally despised comedian is knifed while ""entertaining,"" and Gene--along with a drunken, fumbling ""Son"" from Philadelphia--investigates. Actual persons, like poor Bob & Ray, are forced to appear in this fiction which is big (like Hardy) on tired gags and plugs for assorted N.Y. restaurants and thin (like Laurel) on everything else.