A fast-paced but sensitively told story set in the world of reality TV with an intriguing whodunit at its center.
Sterling presents a Hollywood mystery that focuses on the human costs of celebrity culture.
Critics and fans alike are unsurprised when the body of former child star Molly Mandrie is found hanging from a tree on L.A.’s Mulholland Drive. For 15 years, her chaotic existence has been on public display on her reality TV show, Molly’s Messy Life. She suffered through bad relationships and relapses of drug and alcohol addiction on the show, which featured a revolving cast of co-stars, many of whom would move on to headline their own reality shows. But to movie star Hector Espinoza, who was Molly’s devoted admirer, something about her suicide just doesn’t add up. He asks his old friend and current manager, Murphy Beck, to help him look into unanswered questions surrounding her death. For instance, why didn’t Molly leave a suicide note? And why didn’t Guy Maker, who was Molly’s longtime friend and her show’s executive producer, attend her funeral? Hector, who has a dark secret of his own, throws himself into solving the mystery: “He needed leads. He needed to talk to the people she knew best, who might have known Guy even better.” As he untangles the threads of Molly’s life, however, he finds that the world of reality TV is full of terrible secrets; everyone seems to seek fame and wealth at other people’s expense. In this skillfully written novel, the author (an L.A.-based writer and actor) thoroughly roots his story in a dysfunctional Hollywood culture that he seems to know well. Sterling richly describes the emotions and motivations of the major characters—mostly young men and women who live their lives constantly in front of cameras—with a strong sense of compassion. His story is clearly inspired by how the #MeToo movement rocked Hollywood starting in 2017, but it powerfully focuses on the lesser-known exploitation of actors from the LGBTQ+ community.
A fast-paced but sensitively told story set in the world of reality TV with an intriguing whodunit at its center.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781637557372
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Subplot
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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