Robert Ferrigno continues to surprise. In 2001's darkly mesmeric Flinch, he not only delivered his usual trove of offbeat bad guys, but finally created a protagonist who was equally arresting: Jimmy Gage, a trouble-seeking reporter for the tabloidish SLAP magazine. The sequel, Scavenger Hunt, takes Ferrigno one evolutionary step further, its tale of ambition and guilt in Southern California driven by dense, circuitous plotting, rather than the familiar emotional tension between a flawed male lead and some treacherously captivating femme fatale.

"I want you to write an article about me, about what I'm working on. I even have a title for you: 'The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood,'" says Garrett Walsh, an egotistical, Oscar-winning film director who, after spending seven years in the slammer for killing teenage actress-aspirant Heather Grimm, now tells Gage he was set up, possibly by the husband of an unnamed "good wife" with whom he'd been having an affair. Walsh plans to expose this neat frame in a movie script, and wants Gage to publicize his efforts before anyone can stop him. The reporter is dubious--until Walsh is found dead in a koi pond and his "dangerous screenplay" goes missing. Intent on learning whether the director was murdered, Gage will first have to identify the "good wife," swap body blows with an aging action star, resolve questions surrounding a too-helpful retired cop with a doughnut jones, and determine if Heather Grimm was really as innocent as she appeared. Although there are several throwaway scenes in Scavenger Hunt (including one in which Gage and his cop girlfriend try to nab a "lover's lane" rapist), they don't detract seriously from this often edgy, sometimes humorous yarn, composed in a style that's pleasantly less restrained than several of Ferrigno's earlier thrillers. --J. Kingston Pierce


From Library Journal
Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine, a tell-all entertainment rag in Los Angeles. He's young, curious, and pushy, with a nose for news that gets him close to the "in people" and even closer to real trouble. A party prank scavenger hunt, devised by his publisher, gets Jimmy face time with Garret Walsh, a has-been director fresh out of prison for murdering an ing nue starlet. Needing to "borrow" an Academy Award statue for the scavenger hunt, Jimmy goes to Walsh's ramshackle trailer and gets caught up in his attempt to break back into the biz with a script he calls "the most dangerous screenplay in Hollywood." Two weeks later, Walsh is floating dead in a nearby koi pond, and Jimmy questions the police report that lists the death as accidental. On the pretext of researching an article on Walsh's rise and fall, Jimmy tails the police and does quite a bit of investigating on his own. His publisher is indulgent, sensing a tantalizing lead article for his next issue until this "scavenger hunt" turns deadly and Jimmy ends up at the top of someone else's list. Ranging up and down the sometimes glitzy, sometimes grubby Southern California coast, this latest noir thriller by Ferrigno (Horse Latitudes; Dead Silent) is slender, fast-paced, and populated by colorful characters who run the gamut from high rollers to the dregs of Hollywood wannabes. Edgy and darkly humorous, it will fit nicely into collections alongside Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Jonathan Kellerman.--Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Jimmy Gage, the engaging antihero featured in Ferrigno's widely acclaimed Flinch (2001), returns in another superbly plotted and tautly executed thriller set in the glittering wasteland of contemporary L.A. Paroled convict and former golden boy Hollywood director Garrett Walsh attempts to convince Slap magazine reporter and film critic Jimmy to write an article on his comeback screenplay, a tell-all script about the murder Garrett was falsely convicted of committing. Less than a month later, Walsh is found floating facedown in a tropical fish pond. Convinced that word had leaked out about the jaw- and name-dropping script, Jimmy decides to investigate. Risking his own life, he pits himself and his wits against powerful moguls, crooked police officers, and monumental egos to set the record straight. In a world where few can be trusted, Jimmy stands out as an edgy straight shooter who "can't stand to see the bad guys walking off into the sunset whistling a happy tune." Full of enough twists and turns to satisfy any movie producer, this darkly comic romp is a wildly entertaining ride through the morally bankrupt underbelly of counterfeit Hollywood glitz. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Ferrigno can make you afraid, he can make you laugh, and he can keep you turning the pages.” –The Washington Post

“Captivating. . . . Momentum that doesn’t let up until the last page. . . . Scavenger Hunt boasts a surprising, fast-paced plot and a host of memorable characters.” –The Oregonian

“A nicely plotted tour through the dense fringes of Hollywood, with an occasional torque. . . . Ferrigno is a nimble pro. . . . Assured reading pleasure.” -–Houston Chronicle

“A brisk trot through SoCal’s odd and entertaining landscape, informed by a mix of unpretentious smarts, muscular prose, and darkly funny observation.” –Seattle Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.


Review
?Ferrigno can make you afraid, he can make you laugh, and he can keep you turning the pages.? ?The Washington Post

?Captivating. . . . Momentum that doesn?t let up until the last page. . . . Scavenger Hunt boasts a surprising, fast-paced plot and a host of memorable characters.? ?The Oregonian

?A nicely plotted tour through the dense fringes of Hollywood, with an occasional torque. . . . Ferrigno is a nimble pro. . . . Assured reading pleasure.? -?Houston Chronicle

?A brisk trot through SoCal?s odd and entertaining landscape, informed by a mix of unpretentious smarts, muscular prose, and darkly funny observation.? ?Seattle Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.


Book Description
Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine in Los Angeles—“a troublemaker by trade and inclination, with fast hands and too much curiosity for his own good. Fight or flight, it made no difference anymore.”

This time around, it’s definitely fight.

While on an L. A. party-scene scavenger hunt, Jimmy meets Garrett Walsh, a former boy-wonder director who has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the drug-rage murder of a seemingly innocent teenage girl. Out of prison and out for justice, Walsh chooses Jimmy to help him clear his name by getting the right people to read his newest script, Fall Guy, the story of the setup that sent him away. Walsh dubs it “The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood,” and apparently he’s right: two weeks after they first meet, Jimmy finds him dead. But there is something that rings true in Walsh’s story and something that rings false in the police report of accidental death, so Jimmy sets out after the truth. But is this his scavenger hunt, or is he at the top of someone else’s “find-at-all-costs” list?

Fast-paced, darkly funny, unexpected, crowded with indelible characters—both high and low Hollywood, both pretty good and very bad—Scavenger Hunt is Robert Ferrigno at his bristling best.


From the Inside Flap
Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine in Los Angeles—“a troublemaker by trade and inclination, with fast hands and too much curiosity for his own good. Fight or flight, it made no difference anymore.”

This time around, it’s definitely fight.

While on an L. A. party-scene scavenger hunt, Jimmy meets Garrett Walsh, a former boy-wonder director who has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the drug-rage murder of a seemingly innocent teenage girl. Out of prison and out for justice, Walsh chooses Jimmy to help him clear his name by getting the right people to read his newest script, Fall Guy, the story of the setup that sent him away. Walsh dubs it “The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood,” and apparently he’s right: two weeks after they first meet, Jimmy finds him dead. But there is something that rings true in Walsh’s story and something that rings false in the police report of accidental death, so Jimmy sets out after the truth. But is this his scavenger hunt, or is he at the top of someone else’s “find-at-all-costs” list?

Fast-paced, darkly funny, unexpected, crowded with indelible characters—both high and low Hollywood, both pretty good and very bad—Scavenger Hunt is Robert Ferrigno at his bristling best.


About the Author
Robert Ferrigno is the author of six previous novels, including Flinch, Heartbreaker, and The Horse Latitudes. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1

Seven years later

“God, I hate blondes,” said Tamra Monelli. “What’s the big whoop about
pink nipples anyway?”

“What’s a blonde?” said Jimmy, standing with his arms around the Monelli
twins, Tonya and Tamra, as Rollo checked the viewfinder of the camera,
making sure the hollywood sign was perfectly positioned behind them.

Tonya giggled and pinched Jimmy’s bare ass.

“Last week we lost a part in a slasher film,” complained Tamra. “Three
callbacks, and at the last minute the director decides that the
high-school shower scene is a blondes-only zone, because, and I quote,
‘Blood contrasts better against white skin, and besides, blondes look
more innocent. That’s why everyone wants to fuck them.’ Innocent?” She
cupped her breasts, her nipples dark as anthracite. “Do these look
guilty to you, Jimmy?”

“Smile.” Jimmy Gage showed his teeth to the camera, dropping his hands
to discreetly hold down his erection as the twins pressed against him,
warm and naked and perfect. Jane was going to flip when she found out
about this.

Rollo hit the auto-timer and rushed back, making sure they were all in
the frame. The rickety hollywood sign was behind them, paint peeling,
covered in graffiti, the letters dangerously canted from the last
earthquake. California Stonehenge. The timer clicked, the flash blazed,
and a Polaroid slid out. Item number six on the scavenger hunt list of
seven: nude group photo at a recognizable L.A. landmark. “I still don’t
like this place, Jimmy.” He glanced around at the debris that littered
the ground, winced at an air-conditioner half-buried from the impact.
“All kind of bad shit happens here.”

“Bad shit happens everywhere.” Jimmy checked the backdrop of dark
sandstone bluffs above them; the hollywood sign was built near the top
of a ridge, higher hills looming overhead. Dropping bowling balls off
freeway overpasses was passé among young wannabees. Today’s future lifer
took pride in hauling heavy objects up onto the bluffs and dropping them
on the sight-seers below. A couple of months ago a tourist had been
flattened by an empty fifty-gallon propane tank.

Rollo scooted over to where the camera was perched on a broken Styrofoam
cooler, a nervous, twenty-year-old filmmaker with thick round glasses
and a Trotsky goatee, wearing only a pair of two-tone bowling shoes.

The Monelli twins stretched and preened in the warm night air, smooth
and sleek as weimaraner puppies.

Rollo watched the twins, fanning himself with the Polaroid to speed the
development. “Do you think I look okay, Jimmy? Physically, I mean.”

“You’re a credit to the human genome.” Jimmy slipped on black pants and
steel-tipped welder’s boots, a powder-blue ruffled tuxedo shirt
completing the ensemble. He was tall and lanky, somewhere in his
mid-thirties, with dark tangled hair and an open smile. If you didn’t
know better, you’d think he was just another laid-back hipster–until you
noticed his eyes, saw the edge there. A reporter for SLAP magazine,
Jimmy was a troublemaker by trade and inclination, with fast hands and
too much curiosity for his own good. Fight or flight, it made no
difference anymore.

“Do I really look okay?” Rollo examined the Polaroid, then stepped into
a pair of tie-dyed shorts, almost falling over as he hopped on one
skinny leg. He reached for his Hawaiian silky, an original aloha shirt
from the 1920s, museum quality, worth more than the VW van he drove. “I
mean, if you were a woman, would you find me sexually attractive?”

“Sexually? So we’re past ‘physically’ now?”

“Yeah, it was sort of like a rolling stop. So would you? If you were a
woman?”

“I’m not really in touch with my feminine side.”

Rollo glanced at the twins cavorting among the broken TVs and shattered
microwave ovens. “I think I should start working out or something. Maybe
get some B-twelve shots. Or human growth hormone. They say you can get
cancer from that stuff, but it takes a long time. Five or ten years at
least.”

“At least.”

Rollo glanced up at the bluffs. “We should get out of here.”

The four of them had spent the last few hours driving around Los Angeles
trying to fill the scavenger hunt list that Napitano had passed out at
his party. Antonin “Nino” Napitano was the autocratic publisher of SLAP
magazine, a smash-mouth monthly with a no-corrections, no-apologies
editorial policy. Vanity Fair had perfected the art of the Hollywood
air-kiss, fawning yet dignified, but SLAP’s kisses drew blood, its
eviscerating profiles and critiques sending the rich and famous
scuttling for their spin doctors and libel attorneys.

Invitations to Napitano’s lavish parties were sought after by bit actors
and screenwriters with a P.O. box instead of an office, potential rock
stars, and models-of-the-moment. Scavenger hunt winners had their faces
splashed across the “Shock of the New” section of SLAP’s next issue, a
guarantee that their phone numbers would be on speed-dials all over the
city. For a month, anyway. Jimmy didn’t need the ink–he was Napitano’s
favorite, the only writer who stood up to him–but Rollo and the Monelli
twins could use all the help they could get.

Rollo tugged at his goatee as he stared at Tamra posing inside the giant
letter O, back arched, her belly bronze in the moonlight. “Too bad
Jane’s not here, Jimmy. I’d like to scope out the goods.” He saw Jimmy’s
expression and took a step back. “Jimmy’s girlfriend was supposed to
come to the party,” he explained to the twins, “but she stiffed him when
she heard I was on the guest list. She’s some hotshot detective with the
Laguna PD; real pretty too, but she doesn’t like me.”

“Jane got a call from the assistant DA. One of her cases is going south.
That’s why she had to back out of the party.”

“I’m glad she didn’t come,” flirted Tamra. “Out of sight, out of mind,
that’s my motto.”

“Why doesn’t Jane like me?” asked Rollo.

“She says that every time you come by, she feels that she should count
the silverware afterward.” Jimmy grinned. “I convinced her to cut you
some slack, but bringing the palm tree to her dinner party–that finished
it.”

“You know what that tree was worth?” sputtered Rollo. “Dwarf sago palms
are protected, man. I could have sold it to a collector for a thousand
bucks.”

“He dug it up from a botanical garden,” Jimmy told the twins. “He
arrived at Jane’s door with this palm tree in a shopping cart. All these
lawyers and cops standing around drinking martinis, and here’s Rollo
pushing the cart into the living room, wheels squeaking, dirt falling
all over the carpet.” He shook his head. “I told you to bring flowers.”

“The greenhouse was locked,” explained Rollo.

“You told us you were a director.” Tonya looked at her sister.

“I am,” said Rollo.

“He is,” said Jimmy.

Jimmy and Rollo were the only people in L.A. who were convinced. His
oddball documentaries devoid of commercial potential, Rollo financed his
films with assorted scams and hustles: counterfeiting Disneyland
tickets, peddling hot electronic gear, hacking into databases to improve
credit histories. He was a gawky high-school dropout with an IQ over 140
and barely enough common sense to keep himself out of jail, and though
he slept with a night-light on, he had risked his life for Jimmy and
never mentioned it afterward. They were friends.

Rollo bent down and tossed Tonya her panties, the black silk rippling
through the air like a fleeing octopus. “We should go. The last item on
the list is the hardest.”

“Where we going to find an Oscar?” said Tamra.

“A real Oscar,” said Tonya, spinning her panties around one finger. “No
best-costume or best-song crap.”

“Major-category gold,” finished Tamra. “That’s what the rules said.”

Jimmy reached into his pocket and answered his phone.

“How goes the hunt, dear boy?” cooed Napitano. “Did you get the
rubbing?”

Jimmy could hear music at Nino’s end, and the tinkle of glassware.
“Yeah, we got it.”

“Splendid. Some of the other players had difficulties with that one.
Legal difficulties.” Napitano clucked his disapproval. “Most of the
teams saw ‘A tombstone rubbing from a silent film star’ and headed
directly to Forest Lawn, even though it’s after hours. Arrests have been
made, Jimmy, it’s quite tragic.” He hummed softly. “I was wondering,
though, how the police knew that there was going to be a mass scaling of
the gates.”

“I have no idea.”

“Bravo. ‘Admit nothing’–if that’s not on your family crest, it should
be.” Napitano was chewing something. “Which star’s tombstone did you
visit?”

“Rex the wonder dog. The pet cemetery in Encino is unguarded.”
Napitano’s laugh was a blubbery wheeze as Jimmy broke the connection.
“Get dressed. We’re being watched.”

Rollo craned his neck toward the bluffs.

“Don’t look,” said Jimmy. “Just move.”

The Monelli twins shimmied into their matching black dresses.

Rollo squinted. “I don’t see–” A portable TV crashed onto the ground
about ten feet away, exploded in a spray of glass. He screamed, grabbed
at his ankle.

War whoops sounded overhead.

“Head toward the van,” Jimmy said quietly. A cinder block thudded into
the weeds right beside him. “Don’t run.” He watched Rollo race toward
the van, arms folded over his head, the Monelli twins right behind him,
wobbling on their high heels. Jimmy smiled and ambled up the path, hands
in his pockets, waiting for a grand piano to land on his head.

Rollo didn’t even wait for Jimmy to close the door to the VW van before
peeling off. No one spoke for a long time. They were almost at the I-5
freeway before Tamra finally broke the silence. “So whose Oscar are we
going to borrow?”

Rollo veered into the carpool lane. “It’s a surprise.”

“So is a cerebral hemorrhage,” said Jimmy, suspicious now. “Who are we
going to see?”

Rollo cleared his throat. “Garrett Walsh.”

“Motherfucker,” said Jimmy.

“I knew you weren’t going to like it,” said Rollo, accelerating.

“Who’s Garrett Walsh?” said Tonya.

“He made that kinky movie from a long time ago. Firebug,” said Tamra.

“Firebug won two Academy Awards,” said Rollo, easing through late
evening traffic. “It was his first movie, a cheapo thriller full of
twists and reversals, with lousy distribution and no stars, but Mr.
Walsh walked away with two Oscars, best director and best screenplay.
Even Tarantino didn’t pull off a double play his first time out.” A
silver Lexus cut him off, and Rollo leaned on the horn. “And it wasn’t
that long ago. Nine years, big deal.”

“He murdered a teenage girl,” said Jimmy. “Walsh was only released from
prison a few months ago.”

“Heather Grimm,” said Tamra.

“Who?” said Rollo.

“The girl he killed,” said Tamra. “Her name was Heather Grimm.”

“Seven years for murder–he should have gotten seventy,” said Jimmy.

“I remember now, we were in junior high when it happened,” Tonya chirped
to her twin. “There was a picture of her in Entertainment Weekly. She
looked like a cheerleader.”

“Blonde, of course,” the twins said in unison, clasping pinkies.

“Where else are we going to get an Academy Award, Jimmy?” said Rollo.
“It’s not like there’s a black market in them.” He considered it. “At
least not for the major ones.”

“You sure you know where we’re going?” Jimmy asked a half-hour later.

Rollo squinted through the cracked, dusty windshield. The VW’s lights
barely illuminated the winding, two-lane road as the van lurched its way
up Orange Hill, second gear slipping. There was a restaurant on the
peak, and houses strung along the ridges of the Anaheim foothills,
million-dollar crackerboxes with views of the ocean ten miles away. On a
good day at least.

Jimmy stuck his head out the window to get a better look. The air
pollution cut off the stars, and it was the myriad glittering lights
below that looked like the Milky Way, the rakish, cocked neon halo atop
the A in the angels stadium sign shining brighter than Polaris. It was
as though the world had flipped over, and they were not moving higher
but lower, into the darkness.

“I ran into Mr. Walsh at the Strand’s midnight movie a few weeks ago,”
Rollo said to the twins. “He was getting–”

“What is this ‘Mr. Walsh’ crap?” said Jimmy.

“I was the only one who recognized him,” continued Rollo. “He didn’t
want company, but I followed him to his car afterward anyway. It
wouldn’t start, which I thought was a good omen, because it was three
a.m. and he didn’t have money for a tow truck.”

“Walsh should have called O.J. and asked him for a lift,” said Jimmy.
“Killers helping killers–it sounds like a bumper sticker.”

“How could he not have any money?” said Tamra. “Firebug did over seventy
million domestic. That’s a cost-return ratio of almost fifty to one.
He’s got to be sitting on a pile.”

Jimmy turned around and stared at her.

“What?” said Tamra. “I majored in business at community college.”

“Mr. Walsh was pretty nervous that night,” said Rollo. “Pretty drunk
too. He kept asking me to run red lights and dodge through alleys. I
think he was scared we were being followed. Fans can be pretty
aggressive.” The van lurched, and he fed it more gas, then suddenly
veered off the main road and onto a barely visible gravel path, the
wheels spitting up stones. “Mr. Walsh told me to stay on the paved road,
then had me drop him off in front of this big house. He said it was his
place, but I watched him in my rearview as I pulled away and saw him
pretending to unlock the gate.” Rollo grinned. “He’s a tricky guy. I
guess you have to be when you’re famous.” The van hit a pothole, and
Rollo’s chin banged against the steering wheel, but he was so pleased
with himself that he didn’t seem to notice. “So I started back down the
hill, then cut my lights, parked on the shoulder, and waited. Sure
enough, ten minutes later I see Mr. Walsh walking up this path. I tagged
along on foot. He had to stop a couple of times to throw up, and I
thought once he heard me, but now I know where he lives. Smart, huh?”

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine in Los Angeles - "a troublemaker by trade and inclination, with fast hands and too much curiosity for his own good. Fight or flight, it made no difference anymore."" "This time around, it's definitely fight." While on an L.A. party-scene scavenger hunt, Jimmy meets Garrett Walsh, a former boy-wonder director who has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the drug-rage murder of a seemingly innocent teenage girl. Out of prison and out for justice, Walsh chooses Jimmy to help him clear his name by getting the right people to read his newest script, Fall Guy, the story of the setup that sent him away. Walsh dubs it "The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood," and apparently he's right: two weeks after they first meet, Jimmy finds him dead. But there is something that rings true in Walsh's story and something that rings false in the police report of accidental death, so Jimmy sets out after the truth. But is this his scavenger hunt, or is he at the top of someone else's "find-at-all-costs" lists?

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - Don McLeese

Mystery writer Ferrigno (The Horse Latitudes, Heart Breaker) has yet to receive the popular acclaim he deserves. The author's seventh novel finds him at the top of his game. Probing the seamier side of Hollywood (is there any other side?), the novel concerns an eccentric director named Garrett Walsh, who is notorious for having followed an Oscar triumph with a conviction for murdering a teenage seductress. Upon his release from prison, he attempts to peddle a screenplay that suggests he was framed. "It's a good script," he tells ace scandal-sheet reporter Jimmy Gage, last seen in Ferrigno's Flinch. "So good it may even get me killed." An unlikely hero, Gage sets out to investigate Walsh's claim. As he makes his way through a moral cesspool, Gage encounters his doppelgänger, a villain whose identity is revealed to the reader long before Gage realizes he himself has become the target of murder, not merely the investigator of one. While there are plenty of twists on the way to resolving the whodunit, Ferrigno's plot is distinguished by a combination of caustic social commentary and black comedic irony.

Publishers Weekly

Ferrigno (Horse Latitudes) delivers another devastating-and entertaining-critique of celebrity culture in his darkly comic suspense story set among the players and would-be players of contemporary Hollywood. Jimmy Gage, a reporter for the ferociously dishy SLAP magazine (and the protagonist of Ferrigno's previous novel Flinch), stumbles on an explosive story while interviewing Garrett Walsh, an Oscar-winning Hollywood director who just finished serving seven years in prison for the murder of teenage wanna-be actress Heather Grimm. Walsh swears he's not guilty and tells Gage he's written a movie about what really happened, The Most Dangerous Screenplay in Hollywood. Gage is skeptical, but when Walsh turns up dead (and the screenplay missing), he goes to work to find out the truth. Ferrigno explores the sordid underworlds of Tinseltown and the LAPD through a number of sharply etched characters, such as twin aspiring actresses Tamra and Tonya Monelli, who keep losing parts to their blonde colleagues; Gage's insecure slacker sidekick Rollo ("If you were a woman, would you find me sexually attractive?") and the memorably tough policewoman Helen Katz. Gage is himself a compelling character whose cynicism is balanced by a real moral center. Walsh's death proves to be a mystery of real complexity, involving all the baser motives-greed, lust, ambition-as well as a noble one: love. Unfortunately, the resolution becomes obvious to the reader long before Gage figures it out, but this insightful-and often very funny-novel is still a pleasure to read. (Jan. 7) Forecast: Booksellers might recommend Ferrigno to fans of Michael Connelly and Elmore Leonard, with happy results. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Jimmy Gage is a reporter for Slap magazine, a tell-all entertainment rag in Los Angeles. He's young, curious, and pushy, with a nose for news that gets him close to the "in people" and even closer to real trouble. A party prank scavenger hunt, devised by his publisher, gets Jimmy face time with Garret Walsh, a has-been director fresh out of prison for murdering an ing nue starlet. Needing to "borrow" an Academy Award statue for the scavenger hunt, Jimmy goes to Walsh's ramshackle trailer and gets caught up in his attempt to break back into the biz with a script he calls "the most dangerous screenplay in Hollywood." Two weeks later, Walsh is floating dead in a nearby koi pond, and Jimmy questions the police report that lists the death as accidental. On the pretext of researching an article on Walsh's rise and fall, Jimmy tails the police and does quite a bit of investigating on his own. His publisher is indulgent, sensing a tantalizing lead article for his next issue until this "scavenger hunt" turns deadly and Jimmy ends up at the top of someone else's list. Ranging up and down the sometimes glitzy, sometimes grubby Southern California coast, this latest noir thriller by Ferrigno (Horse Latitudes; Dead Silent) is slender, fast-paced, and populated by colorful characters who run the gamut from high rollers to the dregs of Hollywood wannabes. Edgy and darkly humorous, it will fit nicely into collections alongside Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Jonathan Kellerman. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/02.]-Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews