THE PROSTITUTES' BALL

In Shane Scully’s tenth (The Pallbearers, 2010, etc.), the savvy LAPD cop encounters Hollywood glitz, a homicide blitz and almost nothing that is what it seems to be.      

Can Scully actually stomach as his new partner Sumner “Hitch” Hitchens, a man who drives a $100,000 sports car and encases his lean, handsome, “chocolatey” body in clothes better befitting a runway model? Before Scully can resolve this urgent question, there’s a sudden downpour of dead bodies: a triple homicide somehow connected to an earlier triple homicide, all six corpses linked to a way of getting rich that Scully never imagined would impinge on his life. But that was before Hollywood Hitch, as they call him in LAPD cop shops because he’s come to view police work in terms of movie scenarios—a development eminently understandable given that it was a movie, based on a high-profile case in which Hitch had been pivotal, that accounted for the sports car, the wardrobe, the Malibu mansion and the gorgeous female who appears in permanent residence. Lightning can strike twice, Hitch keeps insisting: a Faustian refrain to an investigation steadily gathering steam and media potential. Certainly it can, Scully’s prepared to concede. But for a dedicated, straight-arrow type like himself, shouldn’t that be the road not taken?

Fast, funny and delightfully twisty—the best Scully yet.