Scavenger hunt /

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

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. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Can hotshot reporter Jimmy Gage help it if the ex-con director he is enlisted to aid ends up dead? Catch Ferrigno on a joint Pantheon/Vintage Crime/Black Lizard author tour of eight cities. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Ace reporter Jimmy Gage, of Hollywood tell-all SLAP magazine, bares all trying to win a boozy scavenger hunt. Flanked by a brace of naked starlets, he . . . well, never mind. It's the last item on the fetch-list that truly matters. Jimmy and his team need "a real Oscar"--that is, "no best-costume or best-song crap." Enter ex-director Garrett Walsh, recently released from prison after pleading guilty seven years earlier to the rape-murder of a young actress, a crime he may actually have committed. Stoned as he was then, he can't really remember, but he's set down the details of his suspected frame in the screenplay he's termed "The Most Dangerous Scenario in the World." Sure, Jimmy may borrow his Oscar, but in return he wants his finished script read and written about big-time in SLAP. Jimmy agrees to the reading part. The next time he sees Walsh, however, the scenarist is floating face down in a fish pond, an apparent suicide. But Walsh's script has vanished, and that spells murder to Jimmy. Who wants the MDSW permanently shelved? Who wants the ex-director permanently ex'd? Jimmy has to know, because, as he says, "I just don't like seeing the bad guys walk off into the sunset, whistling a happy tune." Only once in his six-novel career (Horse Latitudes, 1990) has Ferrigno managed to gain a length on his hard-boiled competition. Since then (Flinch, 2001, etc.) he's been solidly mid-pack. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.