The Dead Hollywood Mom's Society: A Novel - Hardcover

Maracotta, Lindsay

3.39

72 ratings by Goodreads

9780688144982: The Dead Hollywood Mom's Society: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688144985 ISBN 13: 9780688144982

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1996

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When a glamorous neighbor is found dead in Lucy Freer's pool, Lucy, an animation filmmaker and Hollywood mom, goes beneath the veneer of Tinseltown family values into a world of greed, ruthlessness, and sex to find a killer.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Compromising Positions in today's ``family''-oriented, sleazier-than-ever Tinseltown--as a discontented Hollywood wife (and filmmaker in her own right) plays amateur shamus, mostly for laughs, and uncovers kinkiness and nastiness galore in big-time moviedom households. Lucy Freers--Oscar-nominated animator, wife of a no-longer-hot producer, mother of preteen Chloe--becomes the wrong kind of mini- celebrity when the body of stunning neighbor Julia Prentice, a no- talent ex-actress married to an aging sitcom megastar, surfaces in Lucy's pool. Worse yet, since Julia was known to be a voracious adulterer, suspicion falls on both Lucy's sexy husband Kit (who had caught Julia's eye) and Lucy herself. So, to clear the family name, she starts sleuthing, digging up Hollywood dirt--like Julia's past as an S&M call girl, her secret visits to L.A.'s most exclusive plastic surgeon (with an unlisted office number), and her social- climbing rivalry with elegant Summer Rossner (wife of an Ovitz-like super-agent) over the leadership of a kids' charity, the Magic Wand Foundation. In no time, naturally, Lucy's being followed and shot at. She also flirts with adultery, of course, given that Kit (who's been unfaithful and neglectful) is away on location and a hunky screenwriter is renting the house next door. Before the predictable showdown with the killer, Lucy finds another corpse, witnesses a suicide, and bonds--sort of--with frumpy Detective Teresa Show, LAPD (who dons a Carmen Miranda-esque getup to accompany Lucy to the $1500-a-plate Magic Wand gala). The mystery here is middling Colombo-level, with unsavory details that seem more tired than shocking. Still, Lucy narrates with edgy, appealing zest, and Maracotta (Everything We Wanted, 1984) name-drops and roman-...-clefs her way through the New Hollywood--from the parenting craze to the real-estate game--with a neat satirical spin that only occasionally tips over into slapstick. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A gleeful spin packed with laugh-aloud zingers through the family lives of filmdom's rich and famous yields a lively launch to a projected series. With her stable, 12-year-old marriage and a nine-year-old daughter, animator Lucy Freers is used to being perceived as something like the head of the local chapter of the Brady Bunch by her Hollywood neighbors. But she no longer has an exclusive on family values when the glamour set decides that motherhood is the biggest thing since Perrier and liposuction. When even Julia Prentice, the piranha-celeb who lives next door, adopts a baby (with coverage on Entertainment Tonight), Lucy notes that the parenthood cult is full-blown. But then Julia, the wife of one of the country's best-loved actors, is found dead in the Freerses' swimming pool. Lucy and her husband become suspects in the high-profile murder case, and Lucy realizes that she will have to clear her name on her own?especially since it turns out that her husband had been one of Julia's romantic targets. Lucy reels from discovery to discovery, as there's been, for example, a lot of duplicity and some S&M among her acquaintances. Luckily, when things look tough, there's always the earthy detective Teresa Shoe to pull her back to reality. Maracotta, a movie-biz veteran and author of Everything We Wanted, makes Lucy a savvy, amiable narrator who finds out more about Hollywood's real private lives than she may have wanted to know.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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