The Stardom Affair — Robert S. Levinson

Newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife, “Sex Queen of the Soaps” Stevie Marriner, are back.

It's decades ago, when the internet was in its infancy.

Neil is summoned to the apartment of actor Roddy Donaldson, leader of the “Diapered Dozen” gang of teenage movie stars, by condo manager Sharon Glenn. Roddy is in bed clinging to life alongside two dead girls, no memory of who they are or how they got there. Evidence points to him as their killer.

At the urging of Roddy's mother, a prominent casting director, Neil chases after the truth, encountering a motley cast of suspects: among them nasty Nicky Edmunds, co-starring with pal Roddy in Tough Times Two, and glamorous Jayne Madrigal, a high-powered press agent with whom Neil is smitten when Stevie introduces them at a lavish Stardom Magazine gala.

Also: rap superstar Maxie Trotter and his manager, Roscoe Del Ruth; Gene Coburn and Knox Lundigan, millionaire partners in Stardom House companies revolutionizing the internet; model-songstress Aleta Haworth, who knows more than she's telling; fading film star Brian Armstrong, who harbors dark truths; and Stevie's mother, Juliet, and her fiancé, Bernie Flame, a computer whiz who may be able to find answers for Neil in the secret underground world of the Web.

More bodies fall and Neil faces an ugly death before the killer of the two girls is revealed in this fast-paced mystery-thriller by an author who knows Hollywood's many sins and secrets from the inside out.