Playing Dead: A Hollywood Mystery

Lucy Freers lives amid the glitzy trappings of Hollywood. Her friends keep up intimate relationships with aroma therapists and body sculptors, and her neighbors' estates boast screening rooms and humidity-controlled wine cellars. The exclusive Windermere Academy, in which her daughter, Chloe, is a fourth-grader, has a shrink on the payroll to lead "encounter sessions" when tiny tempests threaten the students' sunny days. And even bit players in the Windermere school pageants have publicists and über-agents.

But Lucy, a sensible midwesterner transplanted to this land of Lotus, keeps her sights down-to-earth. She's an outstanding mom, a sexy wife (even with a second child on the way), and an animator whose star is rocketing high. But then, in a flash, her perfect world of storyboard mornings and car pool afternoons goes from romantic comedy to film noir.

Lucy's nanny, Brandon, a former filmmaker--and her onetime lover (but that's another story)--is shot dead while driving her husband's car. It's unclear who the intended victim was, but then Lucy stumbles upon something even more chilling: a videotape hidden among Brandon's things that shows a child in the act of murder.

Though the authorities scoff, Lucy suspects the killer is cruising through classrooms and lunchrooms with Hollywood's privileged children, as dewy-eyed innocent as any other baseball-capped kid. With a razor wit and a hilarious irreverence for the trappings of fame as her only weapons, Lucy launches a one-woman investigation. She brings us smack into the looking-glass world of child actors, where nine-year-olds can fire their own parents, and where little-girl "wannabes" bat false eyelashes atyoung, swaggering superstars. It is a brilliantly observed world where a child's smile commands top dollar and a killer is about to have the last laugh.