The Trouble With Moonlighting

Simona is using her vacation time from HH&H advertising to moonlight for old friends from Italy on a film called “Where Goes the Future?” The future of Johanna Gayle, the five million dollar star, seems shaky indeed when she’s almost electrified in the Lincoln Center fountain during a night shoot. Everyone rules it an accident, but is it? Simona knows that anything can happen on a set where the star plays one man against the other, the director treats her actors like scum, and the aging protagonist obsesses about his vanishing sex. The worst does happen. Simona finds Johanna sprawled in the bedroom of her deluxe apartment, a copper wire around her neck. When Simona’s detective boyfriend arrests Johanna’s lover, the set photographer, Simona is ready to risk her job and boyfriend to exonerate her old Sicilian friend.

A recipe for Sicilian Good Fish Salad is included.

“Crespi deserves special congratulations for her characterization of Simona…[Her] writing makes Simona seem very very human…the end result is a heroine who rings true.”

—Jennie G. Jacobson, The Drood Review of Mystery

“For me, the independence, the insecurity and the introspection set Simona apart from a lot of today’s female sleuths.”

—Joyce Christmas, Mysterious Women

“The setup is good and Crespi is acutely perceptive.”

—Susan Oleksiw, Mystery Scene

“Simona is an interesting character. She’s smart and inquisitive and still trying to adjust to American ways. Her divorce has left her dependent and emotionally needy—a situation her detective boyfriend is trying to deal with.”

—Oline H. Cogdill, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel