SAM SPADE IN THE GREEN ROOM
by Susan Kandel
Biographer Cece Caruso (Not a Girl Detective, 2005, etc.) coaches a surfer-turned-actor for his role as Dashiell Hammett.
Rafe Simic has never really liked books. So when his production company, In the Green Room, options Cece Caruso’s biography for its film Dash!, Rafe decides it would be easier to pay its author to bring him up to speed on all things Hammett than to actually read The Dain Curse. And since Cece’s daughter Annie and her husband, Vincent, now have custody of Vincent’s two-year-old, Cece figures the extra money can’t hurt. So she leaves fiancé Peter Gambino behind for a short hop to soak up some San Francisco—a trip cut short by a call from the L.A. coroner’s office asking Rafe to come back and identify a body. The corpse is Maren Levander, childhood friend and sister of Rafe’s manager Will. Cece has her suspicions, though, especially when Maren’s look-alike best friend Lisa Lapelt claims that Maren would never commit suicide. Looking into Rafe’s past brings Cece face to face with the Bay Boys, thug surfers who guard the waves of Palos Verdes with their fists, and checking out his present puts her on the wrong side of some shady L.A. types. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, even if it means ticking off her best guy by putting her life on the line.
A midsized dash of Hammett spices Kandel’s rollicking fourth.