Margin of Error

Edna Buchanan's Margin of Error is the fifth installment in the highly popular Britt Montero series. This time Britt returns to the mean streets of Miami to untangle the mysterious murders and bizarre events surrounding the filming of a high-budget Hollywood action film. The case puts her amid an interesting group of characters; a Hollywood hunk, a crazed fan, and an unfit mother round out the cast of the book.

Recovering from a nightmarish experience in which she had to kill someone, Britt, a reporter, is suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder when Hollywood megastar Lance Westfell arrives in Miami. He is in town to shoot his latest film, about a government agent under deep cover as a crime reporter, and Britt is ordered by her boss to help him turn his character into a film version of herself. Resentful at first, Britt soon falls for the legendary charms of Lance.

What initially started as a harmless assignment takes a drastic turn when an obsessed fan pursues Lance on the movie set, in the streets of Miami, and even out to Los Angeles. Despite the combined efforts of Britt and Niko, the actor's bodyguard, the stalker always tracks them down, wreaking havoc on anyone in her path. But as murders and a rising body count on the set push the film production far over budget, Britt begins to question if the stalker is the only one with murder on the mind. Her search takes Britt through the bright lights of the movie world to the slums of Miami in pursuit of the truth.