cover image TV Safe: A Stoney Winston Mystery

TV Safe: A Stoney Winston Mystery

Jim Stinson. Scribner Book Company, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19225-3

The sleazy side of Hollywood's television industry is the focus of Stinson's (Truck Shot) fourth absorbing Stoney Winston mystery. The aspiring movie maker is a junior writer on the Oh-Pun Sesame game show when the producer, Marcia ``Ma'' Barker, gives him a tough assignment: either find a way to stop top contestant Amber Sung Li, whom Ma thinks is cheating, from winning $1 million-- or lose his job. Stoney determines that the show's dumbbell glamor girl, Kelli Dengham, is slipping Amber the answers. Then Amber's ex-boyfriend, a photographer, is murdered,and nude pictures of Kelli appear in Raunch magazine. The owner of the magazine and of the show turn out to be one and the same, Amber is murdered and Kelli begins to receive threatening letters. Stoney finds that the time he is spending protecting the show and its greatest asset, Kelli, is jeopardizing his relationship with his girlfriend, a financial genius. Stinson's breezy, irreverent take on the TV world is handled with a surgeon's precision. Readers will cheer the sweet reward offered Stoney for all his troubles. (Sept.)