From Publishers Weekly
McNamara's over-the-top follow-up to
Oscar Season brings back Juliette Greyson, head of public relations at an exclusive L.A. hotel. Juliette is vacationing in Florence when she sees drug-addled starlet Mercy Talbot about to dive into a fountain, much to the delight of the paparazzi. Reluctantly, Juliette rescues Mercy, who is AWOL from a movie shoot in Rome, and takes her to Cerreta, a country estate that Juliette half-owns. As Mercy seems less fraught out of Rome, the movie shoot relocates to Cerreta, and Juliette gets saddled with Mercy's harridan of a mother, dozens of Hollywood types weighed down by addiction, neuroses, and narcissism, and worst of all, Michael O'Connor, screen legend and Juliette's one-time lover. Attempted murders, detectives, overdoses, celebrity self-help gurus, and Cerreta's financial woes are all rolled into a messy but entertaining whole. The setting—Perugia in the summer—works well as a backdrop for this colorful, all-stops-out seriocomic romp.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In McNamara's debut, Oscar Season (2008), Juliette Grayson, head of PR at the posh Pinnacle Hotel in Los Angeles, was shocked by the murder of her unfaithful ex-husband. Now she has escaped to Italy for some much-needed R&R and a break from the Hollywood antics she has to deal with in the course of her work. Unfortunately, Hollywood has followed Juliette in the form of troubled starlet Mercy Talbot, who is climbing a statue in the middle of a Florence fountain. Juliette rescues the drugged-out actress and takes Mercy to the idyllic estate she owns with her cousin, Gabriel. Mercy's manager mother, Angie, soon comes to claim her troubled daughter, but Mercy has serious reservations about going back to work. Her costar died under mysterious circumstances, and Mercy is convinced he was murdered and that she, too, is in danger. A belief that is reinforced when another suspicious death strikes the set. McNamara's frothy mystery is the perfect companion for a summer day at the beach. --Kristine Huntley
