All My Suspects - Hardcover

``Looking back I realize I should have expected something.'' If that opening line quickens your pulse, you're going to love this first mystery by Emmy-winning soap opera star Shaffer. And even if you don't, it'll be a pleasure to see somebody as smarmy as Gregg Whithall, American Broadcasting Network's daytime TV czar, get a bullet through his naked sternum and a gold lam‚ rose tied around his--uh, tied below the bullet hole. Bright Tomorrow executive producer Angie DaVito, who somehow finds herself first identified with the police and then competing with them, traces the rose back to the glory days of Bright Tomorrow star Jesse Southland. It was via Jesse that Gregg had seduced his way into the top job--after which he dropped her from the show. But Jesse was killed two years ago in a car accident. Who treasures her memory enough to kill for it? The guys in props or wardrobe; the assistant veeps locked in a death struggle over Gregg's job; the sweet-tempered actress who plays the show's bitch on wheels; or head writer Larry Bradley, who's forsaken Angie's bed for marriage to an idiot with endless legs? It's a tough call for Angie, who can't believe any of them could've done it. Considerably more knowing about soap operas than mysteries. Still, it's hard to resist a heroine who remarks a few hours after a body turns up in the star's dressing room, ``The rest of the day passed without incident.'' -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This urbane, charming debut introduces Angie DaVito, newly rehired executive producer of the soap opera Bright Tomorrow, who loves her job-until she finds the nude body of her boss, dead of a gunshot, in the star's dressing room. Suspects with motives abound since almost everyone in the cast and crew had tangled with egotistical, womanizing Gregg Whithall. Tough-as-nails Angie, whom readers know has a heart of gold, keeps the show going amidst gossip and rampant rumors. She copes with Whithall's successors, to whom murder might be just a career step, and the anxiety of her former lover, a writer for the show whose wife might have been having an affair with the victim. On the case is equally competent NYPD Detective Teresa O'Hanlon, unawed by cast and management. The Bright Tomorrow staff chooses to tell Angie, rather than the cop, what they know; as unofficial investigator, Angie becomes the repository of information which endangers her life. Shaffer's snappy pacing, intricate plotting and recognizable characters are likely to enchant even those who don't watch soaps.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.