STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT

When Ellin takes a breather from full-blown suspense to dabble in smaller-scale mystery, it's bound to be pretty good. And that's certainly true of this odd case for N.Y. shamus and hard-boiled narrator John Milano, who's summoned to Florida by old flame Sharon Bauer, a superstar who jilted him to marry crippled billionaire Andrew Quist on the advice of her yogi of ""The Path."" Now someone is anonymously threatening to murder that very yogi--who's in residence at the Quist compound--and Milano moves in to guard the mystic (whom he despises) and view the suspects, a slew of plastic, mellow movie folks. While Milano struggles with lust for both married Sharon and an art-expert secretary, the yogi is finally shot--and the plot thickens. . . into a rather sticky twist. Nonetheless, it's smart, funny, and fast.