Distraught over a drowsy economy? Drowning in holiday duties? Don’t fret. Read The Starlet and be delightfully distracted. Mary McNamara has written her second novel The Starlet. This fast-paced and quick-witted mystery reads like a cross between Janet Evanovich and an empathetic TMZ report. The reason for such a wonderful mix of Hollywood and mystery, McNamara has been an entertainment reporter for The Los Angeles Times for the past twenty years, and is currently the newspaper’s television critic.
McNamara’s journalism background has paid off big-time for the readers of the The Starlet. I completely enjoyed the quick and engaging pacing. The first scene introduces the reader to Mercy Talbot, who is scaling a Florentine fountain, mostly naked and totally loaded. Our would-be heroine is a 23-year-old has-been whose stardom has peaked. She has rehab-ed more than once and crashed as many cars, all the while enabled by her look-a-like mother, Angie. Sound familiar? A great deal of the fun in this novel comes from the detective work the reader does trying to identify the real life Hollywood stars disguised as characters in The Starlet.
Mercy finds herself in this public display of desperation because days earlier her co-star and boyfriend, Lloyd Watson, was found hanged in his Rome hotel room, an apparent suicide. The fountain scene is observed by Juliette Greyson, who is a Hollywood insider herself, serving as Director of Public Relations at the elite Pinnacle Hotel in Hollywood. The Pinnacle is where stars and starlets come to behave badly. Juliette is in Florence to escape the antics of her famous clientele, like Mercy.
Despite herself, Juliette whisks Mercy off to her family’s semi-functional villa, Cerreta, in Tuscany. There, with the help of her cousin, Gabe, Juliette hopes to save Mercy from herself. However, the bodies keep piling up. Are Mercy and Juliette safe? You will have to read the book to find out.
While she is a skilled gossip/lifestyle writer, her humor in depicting the fragility of stardom and the lifestyle of the rich and infamous is gentle. There is none of the acerbic humor you might expect, yet you find yourself giggling throughout. I have fallen for Juliette’s sleuthing ways and can not wait to go back and enjoy her exploits in Oscar Season, McNamara’s freshman novel.
If you are thinking, “I can’t add one more item to my to-do list with the holidays around the corner,” think again! I wholeheartedly recommend this fun, quick, yet detail rich novel when you need a break.
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