Best Performance by a Patsy

Teamed up with Mark Bradley, a gay ghostwriter, macho investigator Rayford Goodman--the private eye who broke the celebrated American Beauty Rose murder case of the 1960s--must reinvestigate the case or risk losing what is left of his reputation

Midway through this debut mystery, a character says, "There was sort of a nice sense of adventure building." Readers will have to take his word for it. Although the premise here sounds intriguing ( Murder, She Wrote meets The Odd Couple ), the execution is hackneyed. Mark Bradley is an L.A. journalist, 28 and gay, who writes books about minor (and somewhat tacky) celebrities. Rayford Goodman, 58, is a private detective resting on the laurels of his single-handed solution of a celebrated Hollywood murder, circa 1963. Now his dubious fame is about to be immortalized in his autobiography, which Bradley is assigned to ghost. There's one slight drawback: Goodman got the wrong man. Bradley and Goodman narrate alternating chapters but Cutler often fails to distinguish between their voices; readers may need to refer to chapter headings to mind their "I's" and "he's." What passes for repartee and/or characters' quirkiness comes out as awkward phraseology, and gag lines seem recycled from old vaudeville routines ("What's the agenda?" "A Japanese automobile").
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The very day over-the-hill Hollywood p.i. Rayford Goodman--famous for 15 minutes 25 years ago when he sent porno king Danny Pagani (instead of the police suspect, beloved comedian Dubie Dietrich) to the pen for snuffing megastar Rita Rose--is scheduled to meet his new partner, gay ghostwriter Mark Bradley, he gets beaten up by a thug who warns him not to write his projected tell-all life story; soon after, his borrowed Rolls is blown up and a promised informant is killed in a copycat murder that Pagani seems to have an alibi for. Who's the real killer so anxious to kill the book: Rita's crazy-religious mother, her unsavory ex, her mysterious son, actor/financier Harry Light, studio chief R. Symington Lefcourt--or maybe Dietrich or Pagani? Though Ray and Mark try too hard to be funny, they're usually funny anyway. The main question posed by the knockabout plot--which spins from Jamaican gunmen to crooked cops to the West Coast Mafia and moves through a zillion suspects (all guilty of something, and most introduced over overpriced lunches) to an unexpected and surprisingly toothless murderer--is: What's left over for the promised sequel? -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An unlikely but ultimately successful combination of sleuths occurs when young, mostly out-of-the-closet gay writer Mark Bradley meets biography subject Ray Goodman, the older and once-famous Hollywood private eye who solved the fabulous 1963 Rita Rose murder case. After encountering the unexpectedly paroled "murderer," the pair reexamine the old murder, bump into the assorted Hollywood stereotypes involved in the case, uncover more than a few well-hidden skeletons, and find the real murderer. After a somewhat tiresome beginning, Cutler establishes the partnership, chases around the Hills, and delivers some great comic lines. An author (who has a sequel in the works) worth watching. For larger collections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.