Major Mike's Musings

Review

Rating: 7

At the end of the last Stuart Woods novel, Dead in the Water, lawyer/investigator Stone Barrington suffered a loss – that of his lover, Arrington (“we must never marry”) Carter, who has fallen under the spell of, and married, film star Vance Calder, known in Hollywood as the new Cary Grant.

Then Stone gets a phone call from Calder: Arrington has vanished, and Calder refuses to call the police. The film star believes that only Stone can find her. Within the hour, Stone is on a studio jet to L.A. Alarmed by Arrington’s disappearance and baffled as to why Vance Calder would want her former lover looking for her, Stone is pitched head first into the Hollywood maelstrom – a business he doesn’t understand and people he can’t trust, whose motives are so carefully concealed that Stone doesn’t even know who wants Arrington back and who doesn’t.

The assignment to find Arrington turns out to be the most dangerous of Stone’s checkered career. Powerful people are gunning for him, and the women, although beautiful, are treacherous. Where is Arrington? Why did she disappear? Does her husband really want her back? Stone learns the answers, but he doesn’t necessarily like them.

– from stuartwoods.com