The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes

Starred review from June 19, 2017
Set in 1992, Handler’s fun, clever ninth Stewart Hoag mystery (after 1997’s The Man Who Loved Women to Death) marks a welcome return for the endearing ghostwriter sleuth. His New York literary agent, Alberta Pryce, guarantees Stewart a $100,000 payday for ghosting the story of what a mysterious one-hit literary wonder has been doing for the past 22 years. Richard Aintree penned Not Far from Here, a “coming-of-age masterpiece” considered on a par with Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; but after his wife, a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, took her own life, Richard vanished from the face of the earth. Alberta reveals that one of Richard’s daughters, Monette, has received a letter ostensibly from her father, addressed to her by a nickname that only he and her sister knew. The possibility that Richard might resurface sends Stewart to Monette’s L.A. home, where he eventually becomes involved in a murder investigation. Handler brilliantly combines wry humor with solid detection. Whodunit fans will hope for a shorter interval before book 10. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

June 15, 2017
Who says there are no second acts in American lives? Twenty years after his most recent case (The Man Who Loved Women to Death, 1997, etc.), celebrity-biography ghostwriter Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag runs into more murders in 1992 Hollywood.One-novel wonder Richard Aintree hasn't exactly shone as a family man. The day after the funeral of his wife, Eleanor, a Pulitzer-winning poet who jumped off their roof while high on LSD, he vanished, and his daughters have seen nothing of him in the 20 years since. Now he's written to his daughter Monette, a tell-all novelist who's morphed into a lifestyle brand queen, telling her he's ready to tell his story if she'll just make the arrangements with Hoagy and his literary agent, Alberta Pryce. The promise of a fat kill fee even if Richard's book never appears lures Hoagy and Lulu, his basset hound, out to the West Coast, and shortly after his arrival, he finds that Monette's sister, Regina, Hoagy's long-ago lover, has made the trip from New York as well. The sisters bond unexpectedly over the 17th birthday party of Joey, Monette's truculent son: their relationship is a lot more cordial than Monette's reunion with her estranged husband, TV star Patrick Van Pelt, and his pregnant 19-year-old co-star and mistress, Kat Zachry. While the assembly waits for further word from the absent father, they amuse themselves by scoring drugs, admiring each other's bodies, and presenting Joey with a most unexpected birthday gift. When the inevitable murder follows, Hoagy is on hand to talk nice to Lt. Emil Lamp, the LAPD's specialist in celebrity homicide, until he can sort out a plot with nearly as many moving parts as Murder on the Orient Express. The set pieces, from the killing to the denouement, feel staged and forced, but the characters and dialogue don't disappoint, and the sorely missed hero's mixture of cynicism and sweetness plays as well as ever.

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July 1, 2017

It's been 20 years since Handler's last book featuring Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag and his basset hound Lulu (The Man Who Loved Women to Death). It's 1992. Hoagy is still ghostwriting celebrity memoirs. Twenty years ago, Richard Aintree, who had written one classic coming-of-age novel, disappeared, abandoning two teenage daughters. Now, Richard, or someone pretending to be him, has written to them both. Monette, who became a Hollywood celebrity, taps Hoagy to write the tell-all memoir. Because Hoagy was once in love with her sister Reggie, he knows the women are trouble. Hoagy heads to Hollywood, but, from beginning to end, this job is a mess. He has to contend with paparazzi, a drug-addicted husband, and someone who wants him dead. When there is a murder at a birthday party, neither Hoagy nor his police lieutenant friend believe the confession of the supposed killer. Hoagy is as cynical as ever with a dry humor that will find wide appeal. Lulu is a treat for mystery readers who love dogs. VERDICT Fans who have been missing Handler's series will be eager to pick up this new installment, which, like Sue Grafton's mysteries, represents a past without social media and cell phones.--LH

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017
The appearance of a new Stewart Hoag novel, the first in a couple of decades, is sure to be celebrated by the series' many fans, and Handler more than meets expectations. The year is 1992. Hoag, the failed novelist turned successful ghostwriter of celebrity autobiographies, gets embroiled in a case involving the estranged father of his former lover. Novelist Richard Aintree vanished in 1970; now one of his daughters claims to have received a letter from her father. But this is the same daughter who once claimed that Aintree had sexually abused her, and who wrote a best-selling book detailing what happened to her, but who also went on to write books repudiating her own story. So should Hoag believe her about the letter? When a killer strikes, Hoag realizes he'd better make up his mind quickly. This is a terrific opportunity to rediscover a fine series. Handler published several Hoag mysteries between 1988 and 1997, before he turned his hand to the Berger and Mitry series. Demand for this novel may spur an increase in demand for those older Hoag titles. Hoag's back. And it's about time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)