At the ripe old age of 32, former wild child Isabel "Izzy" Spellman has finally agreed to take over the family business. Let's just say the transition won't be a smooth one. Her first priorities as head of Spellman Investigations are to dig up some dirt on the competition—slippery ex-cop Rick Harkey—and to track down a stolen screenplay called The Snowball Effect. Next, faced with a baffling missing-persons case at the home of an aging millionaire, Izzy hires an actor friend to infiltrate the mansion as an undercover butler. Only he enjoys the role a little too much.
First published in 1885, the novel tells the story of Kate Ede, a bored Midlands housewife unhappily married to an asthmatic draper. When a handsome travelling actor comes to lodge with her family, Kate succumbs to temptation, with disastrous consequences.
A wryly funny and surprisingly moving account of an extraordinary life lived almost entirely in the public eye. A teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day, Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood.
Tristam Gowers and Yves Lafeu have the flamboyance of stage matinee idols, but currently they are running a very smart restaurant, Tryst, which is much patronized by top people in the theatrical profession. Which means it's not Charles Paris's usual ambience, but this small-part player, who's more successful as an amateur detective than as professional actor, is the guest tonight of another fascinating duo, William Bartlemas and Kevin O'Rourke, wealthy collectors of theatrical memorabilia. And he is in at the death: the gruesome murder of Yves.
Simon Brett is back with one of his best theater-inspired detective novels in Star Trap. Though the target for murder is an odious theater and television star, actor/detective Charles Paris finds that the main character is behind the strange happenings backstage, including the rehearsal pianist being shot in the hand, and an actor falling and breaking his leg. Why does the star want to sabotage his show? The answer is one much more human than it first appears.
