When a Los Angeles talk show host sues Beyond magazine for its article portraying him as someone who condones drug use, Mike Lindenthal flies out to L.A. to meet with the article's writer and becomes involved in murder.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The author of The Leaf Boats and former editor of Chicago magazine wisely pens what he knows in this finely tuned, expertly plotted mystery centering around a threatened libel suit. Narrator Mike Lindenthal, executive editor of Beyond , a lifestyle magazine for "readers whose interests and budgets went past the ordinary," assigns a piece on L.A. talk-show host Bangor Laudicek to writer Trilla McGuffy. Damage control is required when she accuses her subject of condoning drug use. Accompanied by the magazine's tough-talking, street-smart attorney Bob Struiker, Lindenthal leaves New York and flies west to meet wth McGuffy in hopes of getting a retraction and/or a letter of apology to appease the outraged Laudicek and his even more outraged wife, Pamela. Before long, Lindenthal finds himself hopelessly smitten with the writer even as he realizes that her former affair with Laudicek has undermined her objectivity. When the talk-show host turns up dead, McGuffy and Lindenthal contend with weightier charges than libel, and it is up to ever-savvy Struiker to keep a level head when romance prevents Lindenthal from seeing things clearly. Near pitch-perfect dialogue and a bitingly funny narrative voice carry events to their riveting conclusion.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Young editor Mike Lindenthal, of N.Y.C.'s slick, sophisticated Beyond magazine, finds himself in trouble after an article he'd commissioned about L.A.'s much idolized TV talk host Bangor Laudicek brings the threat of a libel suit. To head it off, Beyond's legal superman Bob Struiker decides that he and Mike will fly to L.A. to meet with Laudicek, his lawyer, and author of the piece, Trilla McGuffy. Photographer Burley Moore and others from the mag's West Coast office float around the edges, supplying gossip on Trilla's druggy past and her long-standing vendetta against Bangor. The hotel suite meeting, attended also by Bangor's handsome, high-strung wife Pamela, seems to end in another triumph for Struiker, but in its aftermath Bangor is dead--fallen or pushed from the suite's balcony. Mike, meanwhile, is in thrall to the gorgeous, mercurial Trilla, but manages to pull himself together as the absurd plot behind Bangor's death comes to light in a lumbering finale. The author's crisp, often luminous style--so deftly used in his debut novel The Leaf Boats 1991)--turns bloated and florid here; his L.A. Lorelei is just another mixed-up blond with intellectual pretensions in a cumbersome story with the unreal air of a big-budget, high-gloss movie. Readable, sporadically intriguing, but disappointing. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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