DEATH AS A CAREER MOVE

Now employed as a security consultant at the Majestic Pictures studio, p.i. Chico Cervantes (Rough Cut, Mexican Standoff) happens to be on hand when a music editor working on Cold Wind, the Tommy Osborne film bio, is found dead on the premises. Then someone ransacks the victim's home and steals all his tapes--including the one that he called in Clay Weston, Osborne's former partner in the group DMZ, to listen to. Sidestepping the studio's inept security forces, Chico picks his way through the power echelon, trying to find a motive, when the editor's male lover confesses to the murder--and commits suicide. Then Weston is killed, and Chico finds himself up in the hills at Osborne's old home/studio--where, in a confrontation with several heavies, including a bear (which turns out to be on his side), he discovers that death, even if faked, is big box-office material. High-energy stuff but without the humor of Mexican Standoff. The subplot concerning Chico's live-in, starlet-wannabe Alicia, going Hollywood is tart, if not particularly fresh. But: the wily though often flummoxed Chico is still an engaging antihero.