Phony Tinsel — Robert S. Levinson

There's no shortage of tinsel in bestselling author Robert S. Levinson's tenth mystery-thriller set in 1930s Hollywood. Phony Tinsel starts off when adored film star Sarah Darling digs her claws into Charlie Dickens, a naïve, quick-tempered screenwriter desperate for success. He's easily seduced into Sarah's scheme to murder her husband, skirt-chasing producer-director Max Moonglow. There's romance, too, as Charlie juggles his emotions between conniving ingénue Polly Wilde and Robin Moon, a missing migrant worker he's vowed to rescue from the harsh realities of life beyond Tinseltown. Sarah, meanwhile, plays hostess to a stable of lovers from her sex-driven past and her ego-driven present -- keys to a future she finds worth the price of a murder or two, or three.