When a bit actor and part-time male prostitute dies in a mysterious car explosion, the Los Angeles police don’t seem to care. But private eye Saxon does—poking around the dimly lit West Hollywood gay bars and the boardrooms of a television network. Along the way, he runs afoul of a vindictive pimp, a game-show host, a cadre of frightened network executives, and a movie sex goddess who is fighting the encroaching years with straight bourbon and a lover 20 years her junior. Saxon’s investigation leads him in two directions at once, and climaxes with a sudden and fiery death.

“Roberts’ second novel… is another winner. If anything, it is a better novel than An Infinite Number of Monkeys.” (The Orlando Sentinel)

Excerpt: Raina Stone in her prime had been one of the loveliest women ever to walk in front of a camera. Black-haired and blue-eyed, there was never a moment when her on-screen persona was not radiating sensuality, an exotic promise of delights far beyond the experience of the countless male movie fans who made her the reigning sex goddess, along with Marilyn Monroe, of the ’50s. Monroe was the vulnerable innocent whose overwhelming sexiness seemed to be an afterthought. Raina Stone was the slut, the corrupter, the Mother Goddamn of the Eisenhower era who knew more than she’d ever tell and who held back nothing, the Susie Homewrecker doll who walked away from the wreckage laughing. Raina Stone in her early fifties was still drop-dead gorgeous and still promised delights. I was impressed as hell just to meet her.

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Publication Year: 1988

Pages: 215