Kiss of the Devil's Breath — Lawrence Kelter

Here's the scoop. Once there was Marlow, now there's Mango, Frank Mango, a new detective doing his job in a very old fashioned way, an unlikely hero in an age of computers, gadgets, and gizmos. Two dead bodies have been discarded along the Sunset Strip, both aspiring actors, women of talent and ambition in a town renown for eating you up and spitting you out. Who really cares about these nobodies? Mums the word -- with the Academy Awards just days off, the powers that be are determined to sweep the dead under the red carpet at least until Oscar can take his gratuitous bow. There are, however, wrinkles in this finely crafted plan of deception, most notably the disappearance of yet another woman, a killer whose sniper rifle is trained on the fabled red carpet, and a throwback detective who doesn't like to get pushed around. "Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum," -Nelson DeMille