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Polly Pepper is a frustrated actress. The aging queen of comedy has a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but she hasn’t been offered a top TV role in ages. When one of her contemporaries dies suddenly while filming the movie Detention Rules! Polly is sure she’ll be asked to step into the woman’s role. She’s both astounded and insulted when the part goes instead to her long time rival, Sedra Stone. Years before, Sedra seduced Polly’s second husband, the father of Polly’s party planner son, Tim. A third husband later, Polly still hates Sedra’s guts. Polly is inconsolable – until Sedra winds up dead, too. What looks like a freak accident – Sedra falls into an empty swimming pool on the production set – is soon discovered to be murder. The show must go on, though, even if the set is crawling with cops. Polly graciously consents to fill the role once played by her rival, and once on the set, starts a little snooping of her own. Aided by Tim and her ever-faithful maid Placenta, Polly charms the pants off a security guard who subsequently gives her the lowdown on everyone in the crew, including the dearly departed Sedra. The suspects are plentiful and include Dana Pointer, the young star who insisted on Sedra’s inclusion in the film; Jack Wesley, a closet homosexual whose acting ability is strained by Dana’s constant flirtation; Missie Miller, the overly ‘nice’ actress who drags her half-blind mother to the set each day; Lauren Gaul, a stand-in who knows Polly’s role better than anyone; Adam Berg, the disgusted director who’s quickly tiring of the in-fighting between Dana and Missie; and Ben Tyler, the man who wrote Detention Rules! The saucy Polly decides there’s only one way to expose Sedra’s killer: throw a party that will be the envy of all Hollywood. With the entire cast of the ill-fated movie in attendance, Polly, Tim, and Placenta stage a script of their own that dazzles both the police and the not-so-bright murderer. Walt Disney Studios publicist RT Jordan has written a witty satire of the Hollywood set in all their glory. His characters are straight from the pages of The National Inquirer – in this book called The National Peeper – and his dialogue is as sharp as the proverbial serpent’s tooth. Jordan lambastes some of the best-known actors in Hollywood, including some who are still working in films, and does so with stunning impunity. Readers will visualize a combination of America’s great female comediennes in the character of Polly. Reminiscent of Jack Benny’s Rochester, Placenta plays the straight man to her boss and is glorious in the role. Tim fills out the trio with admirable reserve, casting eyes at other males in the story only occasionally while acting as a steadying influence on his mother. The plot is more or less secondary to the characters, but that’s not really a problem given the satirical nature of the story and the author’s ability to keep the reader engaged in a playful poke at Hollywood. This should be a winner for Jordan who plans to continue the series with a second Polly Pepper mystery. Which leaves us wondering, who will be the next Hollywood star to fall victim to Jordan’s slash-and-burn style of writing?
Reviewed by Mary V. Welk, March 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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