The Berger/Mitry series is so much fun with its believable portrayal of smalltown life with a mix of affluent, middle class, and working class people. The switchup of having the main female character, Des, always working to keep Mitch out of trouble is a nice touch.David Handler strikes a good ba...
David Handler triumphed with his Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag mystery series, each novel more excellent than the one before. Handler ended that series 1997, leaving his fans bereft -- until the publication of The Cold Blue Blood, the beginning of a new series featuring Mitch Berger, "the lead film critic...
Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag was at one time literature’s golden boy. But his second novel was greeted with a yawn, and his marriage to beautiful actress Merilee Nash failed not long after. Now Hoagy has been paying the bills by ghostwriting celebrity biographies. His latest assignment is Cameron Noyes, ...
New York film critic Mitch Berger is spending the fall on a private island near a tranquil Connecticut village. Unfortunately the village has now become wracked with conflict between traditionalists and developers. Mitch gets to know Hangtown Frye, a famous and reclusive sculptor who owns a far...
SYNOPSIS: Tito Molina and Esme Crockett are the Brangelina of Dorset, CT. They're famous, impossibly gorgeous and married. They, their publicist, their fans and van loads of paparazzi have descended on the peaceful, posh village of Dorset for a few weeks of relaxation. However, after a midnight e...
The story and the mystery itself were fine, but the characters do not feel at all real to me. I loved the theme, though, best stated in this quote from Mitch, the film critic. "Hollywood keeps treating us like little children. That's how they rake in the big bucks -- by encouraging us to choose s...
David Handler has written a series of Stewart Hoag mysteries in which Hoag is a ghost writer hired to collaborate on the autobiography of an individual. During the course of research and interaction with the subject he discovers a mystery which he then proceeds to solve (of course.) Hoag has been...
A storm is brewing in Dorset. Poochie Vickers, the local aristocrat, is becoming even more eccentric in her old age. She's taken up shoplifting and reckless driving but refuses to see a doctor. Her worrisome daughter, Claudia, is angling to take over the family fortune, which makes some of the ...
From the Edgar winning-author of The Man who Would Be F. comes the publishing event of the decade. Ghostwriter Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag has been chosen to write the sequel to Oh, Shenandoah. And as much as Hoagy wants the book to succeed, someone else is willing to kill to keep it from being publishe...
When chest-beating author Thor Gibbs runs off with his 18 year old stepdaughter Clethra Feingold, the story is splashed all over the media. It’s not only the five decades that separate their ages, but Thor’s former wife and Clethra’s mother is the high profile feminist and former congresswoman Ru...
Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, ghostwriter to the stars, has received a puzzling letter in the mail. It’s the first chapter of a book, describing the murder of a beautiful single woman who manages a pet store. When the body of a woman is discovered by cops, Hoagy contacts his police friend Romaine Very, w...
Ghostwriter to the stars extraordinaire Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag takes on a wunderkind director as his client — equal parts Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and Bill Gates — in The Boy Who Never Grew Up, the fifth novel in the fabulous series. Matthew Wax, Hollywood’s hottest direct at just 38, simulta...
Hoagy and Lulu (his cat food-eating basset hound) find themselves in Hollywood, where Hoagy will be ghosting the memoirs of has-been funnyman Sonny Day. Sonny is the man who put the "ick" into "shtick." Sonny made silver screen history as half of Knight and Day, the comedy team who kept the '50s ...
Hoagy, a ghostwriter/reluctant amateur detective, and his catfood-eating hound, Lulu, return as Hoagy pens the memoirs of an infamous rock and roll star. He expected the assignment to be hot--but not quite as dangerous or deadly as it actually was.
Mitch was standing there with an adorable little sun-browned couple who were instantly identifiable as his parents. Mitch had his mother’s dense curly hair and busy little rabbit nose. And his father’s bright, probing eyes. Happily, Mitch did not share his father’s fashion se...
I grew up hearing it. Every kid in New York grows up hearing it. Black Jack Kidd was the flesh and blood embodiment of the impossible dream that was, is and always will be the engine that powers New York City. He was born, fittingly enough, on the Fourth of July, 1902, in Rockaway Beach, Queens, ...
Hot Shot New York Movie Critic—I know you told me that you no longer feel “connected” to this place but I have some very sad news to send along concerning little Molly. Her father, Richard, was murdered last night. Des found him floating in the river at the end of Sour Cherry Lane with his throat...
But that haunted look I’d seen in those eyes was gone now. It had been replaced by a shocked, unblinking stare. And her right eye wasn’t even there anymore. The bullet took it out before it went straight through her brain and blew out the back of her head. She was lying on her back on the steamy ...