A Stewart Hoag Mystery series by David Handler (#01-8)
Requirements: epub reader, 4.3 MB
Overview: David Handler, who began his career in New York as a journalist, was born and raised in Los Angeles and published two highly acclaimed novels about growing up there, Kiddo and Boss, before resorting to a life of crime fiction.
Genre: Mystery
1. The Man Who Died Laughing: Down on his luck, a writer takes a ghostwriting job for a troubled comedian
Stewart Hoag’s first novel made him the toast of New York. Everyone in Manhattan wanted to be his friend, and he traveled the cocktail circuit supported by Merilee, his wife, and Lulu, his basset hound. But when writer’s block sunk his second novel, his friends, money, and wife all disappeared. Only Lulu stuck by him. The only opportunity left is ghostwriting—an undignified profession that still beats dental school. His first client is Sonny Day, an aging comic who was the king of slapstick three decades ago. Since he and his partner had a falling out in the late 1950s, Day has grown embittered and poor, until the only thing left for him to do is write a memoir. Hoagy and Lulu fly to Hollywood expecting a few months of sunshine and easy living. Instead they find Day’s corpse, and a murder rap with Hoagy’s name on it.
2.The Man Who Lived by Night: Hoagy discovers a rock god’s deadly side is more than an act
From the first time they played on the Ed Sullivan Show, Us was the hottest band on earth. For more than a decade, the group tore through the charts and indulged in an endless cycle of drugs, women, and violence, until two musicians died—the drummer by drugs, the guitarist by a crazed gunman. Once the band was finished, lead singer Tristam Scarr retreated to the English countryside, hiding from the world until the day he hires an American to ghostwrite his memoirs. Stewart Hoag arrives in London in the company of Lulu, his ever-hungry basset hound, to find the rock idol of his youth reduced to a wheezing, frail fortysomething. The first thing Starr tells him is that their drummer never overdosed—he was murdered. And as their interviews progress, Hoagy learns that working for a rock star is almost as dangerous as being one.
3.The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald: Hoagy tries to save a client from the deadly world of high-stakes publishing
Stewart Hoag knows how quickly fame can fade. The same critics who adored his first novel used his second for target practice, ending his literary career once and for all. To keep his basset hound fed, Hoagy ghostwrites memoirs for the rich, famous, and self-destructive. His newest subject reminds him all too much of himself. By the age of twenty, Cam Noyes is already being hailed as the next F. Scott Fitzgerald. Though he’s only published one book, Cam runs with the big boys: dating artists, trashing restaurants, and ending every night in a haze of tequila and cocaine. So glamorous is his lifestyle that he’s having trouble starting his second novel, forcing his agent to hire Hoagy to get the little genius working on a memoir instead. As Hoagy digs into the kid’s life story, he learns that New York publishing is even more cutthroat than he thought.
4. The Woman Who Fell from Grace: A sequel to a fifty-year-old book puts Hoagy on the scent of a long-cold murder case
Few American novels are as beloved as Alma Glaze’s Revolutionary War epic, Oh, Shenandoah. Although Glaze died before she could write a sequel, she left behind an outline for one, along with instructions that it not be written until fifty years after her death. The deadline has passed, and the American public clamors for the long-promised Sweet Land of Liberty. Only one thing stands in its way: Glaze’s heirs. Her daughter, socialite Mavis Glaze, is writing the novel under guidance from her mother, who she claims has been appearing in her dreams. As Mavis’s writing spirals farther into madness, her brothers hire Stewart Hoag, a ghostwriter famous for dealing with troublesome celebrities. When he arrives at the family’s Virginia manor, he finds that Alma’s is not the only unsettled spirit. Blood was spilt for Oh, Shenandoah, and more will die before the sequel hits the bestseller list.
5.The Boy Who Never Grew Up: A famous director, mired in a nasty divorce, hires Hoagy to salvage his name
In Matthew Wax’s films, politicians are honest, parents are respected, and nice guys finish first. Wax has been Hollywood’s most beloved director for decades, and his personal life seemed as squeaky-clean as the world of his films. But when he and his wife, leading lady Pennyroyal Brim, file for divorce, the mud starts to fly. She accuses him of bedroom tyranny, sexual perversion, and every stripe of abuse. When she announces a tell-all memoir, Wax fires back the only way he can. He calls Stewart Hoag, ghostwriter to the stars. To tell Wax’s side of the story, Hoagy and his basset hound Lulu have to get closer to the boy wonder than anyone ever has. The true story of the man behind America’s most family-friendly films is even darker than the press suspects, and people will die to keep it hidden from view.
6. The Man Who Cancelled Himself: When America’s favorite sitcom star disgraces himself, Hoagy steps in
Lyle Hednut, known to America as Uncle Chubby, has been the top draw in television comedy for three seasons straight. He is three hundred pounds of good humor and wholesome charm, beloved by children and adults alike until the day the police find him enjoying the show at the wrong kind of movie theater in Times Square. The arrest destroys his image, but his sitcom is too popular for the network to shut down. About to start production on the fourth season, he decides to tell his side of the story, and hires Stewart Hoag—failed novelist and ghostwriter for the disgraced—to do the writing. Hoagy quickly sees that Uncle Chubby’s cheer is no more than an act. The comedy icon is thin-skinned, irrational, and prone to rage. With a man like that in charge of a TV show, it won’t be long before comedy violence turns into the real thing.
7. Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy: Hoagy takes up his pen to defend a friend who’s done the indefensible
Stewart Hoag has quit ghostwriting. Living in Connecticut with his ex-wife, Hoagy works on a novel and tends to Tracy, his brand-new daughter, who’s more beautiful than anything he’s ever written and only took nine months to make. Life is peaceful, until Thor Gibbs arrives to tear it apart. An unapologetically swaggering author, Thor is past seventy but still looks like the brash young man who befriended an aging Hemingway and inspired the first of the Beat poets. Once he was Hoagy’s mentor, but now he needs his help. Thor is in the middle of a tryst with his eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, and every newspaper, lawyer, and cop in the country wants him strung up from the highest tree. He hires Hoagy to help the beautiful young woman tell their side of the story. But trouble is following the controversial couple, and death is about to visit the cottage.
8. The Man Who Loved Women to Death: A killer with a novelist’s touch wants Hoagy to be his editor
The author calls himself the Answer Man. He introduces himself to Stewart Hoag—onetime literary darling of the New York scene—with a letter begging for help with his first novel. Hoagy usually ignores such requests, but the Answer Man’s sample chapter grabs his attention. It is a chilling, first-person story about a man who picks up a girl in a pet shop, takes her home, and savagely murders her. The imagery is clear, the prose strong, and the storytelling as truthful as though the author had actually lived it. When he opens the next morning’s paper, Hoagy realizes he was reading nonfiction. A young pet shop employee has been bludgeoned to death, and the crime’s details match those in the manuscript. As the Answer Man keeps killing, he continues writing letters asking Hoagy to collaborate with him. If Hoagy can’t stop him soon, he may find himself starring in the book’s next chapter.
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