Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman

June 6, 2009, Hong Kong

Paperback 2008, 327 pages.

Tess Monaghan is hired to guard a star Selene Waites during the filming of a TV series called Mann of Steel. The main threat is from George Sybert who thinks he, together with his good friend Bob Grace, gets his story stolen by the producers. This resulted in two murders. To complicate things, Selene and Johnny (Mann) also are sabotaging the show so as to get out of their contractual commitments.

The author seems to use two major techniques in her writing: boring the reader with all the minutiae of how a TV production works, and throwing in extra suspicious characters to keep the reader guessing. By so doing, she transforms a reasonably good plot into a work of mediocrity. Which is too bad as I am sure the book would be much more enjoyable if she just keeps to the knitting. Nothing is gained by describing the inner workings of TV production in detail (you get the feeling she doesn't want to waste any of her research) and putting nearly everyone under suspicion. I am no writer, but I did learn early in life how difficult it is to edit anything out once it is written. But I thought only amateurs have that problem.

Given all the panning I did above, I still think this is a reasonable book to read. I actually started reading it, put it down for several months, and picked it up again. And didn't miss much.