Another Thing to Fall, Laura Lippman

All Tess Monaghan wanted was a morning of sculling.  But while rowing at sunrise, she literally runs into the cast and crew of Mann of Steel, a TV show being filmed right there in her beloved Baltimore.   After being pulled out of the water, she expects to be scolded for ruining their shot.  Instead, she is offered the job of watching their young star, difficult to manage star, Selene.  Seems there have been some incidents on the set that lead the producer to believe that someone is trying to get to Selene and stop the production.  While Tess is not sure that being babysitter to a spoiled starlet is really her thing, they offer her almost twice what she usually charges.  It's not long before Tess is drawn into both the stars personal drama-and a murder.  With the help of her best friend Whitney Talbot, and rescued street kid Lloyd Jupiter, Tess finds out what is really going on behind the scenes of Mann of Steel.

In Another Thing to Fall, Laura Lippman has once again provided the perfect popcorn book.  The characters are engaging, the action of well-paced, and the mystery provides a small challenge to the brain without too many clues to have to keep straight.  She does trot out all of the usual Hollywood cliches about spoiled actresses and almost has-been actors trying to make a come-back and egotistical producers who expect everyone to kowtow to them.  But hey, for all I know Hollywood really is like that-it's not like I'm hanging out with the A-Listers!  I guess the reason that those cliches gets trotted out is because the rest of us peasants find something amusing/entertaining/comforting in thinking about the stratospherically famous as being not-so-perfect.  All in all, this book was a great summer read-very satisfying brain candy!