Customer Reviews

The Cheshire Moon

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Brimming with Southern California hip, glamor and sleaze, Ferrigno's second novel (after "Horse Lattitudes") features burnt-out journalist and divorced father, Quinn, now working for SLAP magazine, the latest in tabloid slick.

Quinn's old friend Andy, dealer in stolen gadgetry, stumbles on a murdered TV producer - and is in turn murdered. But Andy's apparent suicide allows police to close the case and Quinn is on his own.

Well, almost. His sidekick, Jen Takamura, a sultry, mid-twenties, Japanese American photographer with green eyes, a fearless disposition and a corvette, sticks with him as they paw through the rubbish of Hollywood secrets, pursuing whispers of motive into the cushy enclaves of talk-show superstar Sissy Mizzell and her venerable husband, a Lorne Greene type with aspirations to be governor.

The narrative segues from Quinn to the increasingly deranged murderer so the reader already knows who and almost why. This does not detract from the page-turner pace but it does require Ferrigno to come up with a bang-up twisty ending. He does not. And female readers may find themselves giggling over the exotic Jen who could not exist outside the rarified air of male fantasy.

This was my introduction to Ferrigno's books, and I expect that his later efforts will get better. He dragged out a minimal mystery with a lot of good characterization. He was able to sustain the suspense - not of whodunnit, but rather of whydunnit. I read through it quickly, which means it was written well enough to sustain my interest.

Written with all the realism, originality and character development of a soap opera. Fortunately, also with the suspense of a decent thriller. But the mystery is sustained only by vague hints of X-rays that are hardly connected to the action, the romance develops with utter predictability and the ending can hardly be called original or surprising. Final score: full marks on the suck-o-scale.