Double Exposure
Stoney Winston Hollywood Mysteries, no. 1
Publisher Description
(Newly proofed and reformatted) Ah, the romantic 1980s! No Internet, Facebook, or Twitter. Telephones tied to the wall. Music on vinyl or flimsy cassettes -- and don’t even start on the fashions! Hollywood wandered in the desert between the lush studio days that were gone and our flush modern times full of cable and Netflix. Work for film people was scarce in those days and Stoney Winston just barely scraped by. If the 1980s were romantic, Stoney was far too busy surviving to notice....
Desperate for cash, Stoney takes a job tracking a missing daughter whose porno screen test is being used to blackmail the owner of a tiny, failing studio. When he finds the girl murdered, the bad guys responsible start hunting him down, with a similar plan for Stoney. Pursuing his quest (and saving his hide) Stoney tangles with a randy TV evangelist, hired thugs, two lethal fires, and a cold midnight swim off a boat taking him out to sea on a one-way trip with a heavy anchor. All the while, three women offer him aid and comfort, though only one is his live-in lady. In the end, Stoney delivers a rough and ready justice, but all he gets in return is a totaled car. He keeps his lady, though, and that’s more important to him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stoney Winston, Harvard grad and would-be Hollywood script-writer, is functioning meanwhile as a general factotumprop-man, "director,'' anything that pays the rentfor the shifty operator of a grubby little studio making sexy soda-pop commercials. Suddenly everything changes: an 18-year-old girl specializing in straight hard-core pron is missing; her stepmother is being blackmailed to pay up or a particularly damning film will be released and she will face certain ruin in business. Can Stoneytough-talking, without illusions, endowed with an uncommon gift for finding anythingfind film and girl? The hunt will lead him through the porn foundries and other moral sewers of movieland, through bloodshed and assorted mayhem. Stinson is clever and witty, and his hero is often too much of a wise-guy for his ownand the reader'sgood, but this is a literate mystery and an entertaining read. November
