Tag Archives: David Handler

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Wasn’t All There,’ by David Handler

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There’s a precious handful of writers whom I reread every few years just to remind myself what great writing is. Hemingway isn’t one of them.

Several recent releases from my favorite authors have recently been released, but I haven’t bought them because they’re kind of pricey, and things are a little tight just now. But I couldn’t resist David Handler’s latest Stewart Hoag book, The Man Who Wasn’t All There.

As with all the recent books in the series, this one isn’t contemporary, but is shoehorned into Stewart’s past. The Man Who Wasn’t All There is set in the 1990s. Hoagy has finally overcome the writer’s block that metastasized into drugs, divorce and destitution for him, and is clean again, working at last on his next novel. Even better, he has reconciled with his ex-wife, actress Merilee Nash. He’s been living in her New York apartment, but he’s just moved out to her Connecticut farm to winterize the house when he isn’t creating, while she’s in Budapest shooting a movie with Mel Gibson.

It’s great until he’s approached one day by a tubby little man with serious BO, who’s cobbled together something resembling a state trooper’s uniform, and carries a pistol. This delusional man is looking for Merilee and tries to push Hoagy around. Hoagy and his faithful basset hound, Lulu, run him off.

Hoagy then calls the police, and soon a fleet of official vehicles show up. Turns out the weird little man is Austin Talmadge, the second richest man in Connecticut. He’s delusional, and sometimes goes off his medications and harasses people. This is of concern to his brother Michael, the richest man in Connecticut, a recluse who’s close to the governor. The police are soon headed out to bring Austin in again, but it goes wrong, and Hoagy (along with Lulu) gets kidnapped by the loony billionaire. Much violence and mystery follows, until Hoagy figures it all out.

The Man Who Wasn’t All There went down very smoothly. The Stewart Hoag books are consistently fun to read. Hoagy is a bit of a snob and a dilettante, but possesses just enough humor and self-awareness to make his company amusing. Occasionally he hints at opinions I don’t care for, but (as you see above) he sometimes gets it right. He disses Hemingway in this one, and that always pleases me.

Recommended.

Fiction, The Press

‘The Girl Who Did Say No,’ by David Handler

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I’m going to do something different tonight, in reviewing David Handler’s short Stewart Hoag mystery, The Girl Who Did Say No. I’m going to give the book a less than enthusiastic recommendation, in spite of my fondness for the series as a whole.

The set-up is pretty standard for the series. Hoagy, one-time literary wunderkind and current ghost-writer to celebrities, gets a high-priced offer to do an editing job. Anna Childress, a legendary Hollywood sex symbol of the 1960s, died recently and left her personal diaries behind. Rumor has it the diaries contain the straight dope on all the film industry’s dirty laundry from the big studio days. Her agent has arranged to have the removal of the diaries from the bank safe deposit box broadcast on national TV. Millions are expected to watch, and the book is a guaranteed monster bestseller.

But when Hoagy arrives in LA, he’s immediately waylaid by the last of the old studio moguls. The studio head is willing to pay him twice his promised fee to just walk away from the project. The industry’s secrets need to remain secret, he says. That’s what people would really want, if they knew what was good for them. Hoagy refuses.

The story worked out in a fairly predictable way, it seemed to me, and was uncharacteristically downbeat for this usually light-hearted series. Plus, I detected at least one political barb. And it seemed to me the price was a little high for a book of this length.

But you might like it better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man In the White Linen Suit,’ by David Handler

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It’s 1993, and Addison James, The Man In the White Linen Suit, is the most popular novelist in the world (think James Michener), an industry in his own right. A wounded veteran of OSS operations in World War II, he is a foul-tempered, cruel-hearted octogenarian, married to a sexy, manipulative gold digger young enough to be his granddaughter. He treats his lumpish adult daughter with contempt; she in turn is the most hated and unscrupulous editor in New York. His memory is failing, so he employs an assistant, Tommy O’Brien, to do his research and most of the writing. Without credit or a percentage, of course.

But Tommy has disappeared, and with him the only copies of Addison’s latest manuscript. The publishing company asks Stewart Hoag, celebrity ghost writer, to find them, because Tommy is an old friend of Hoagy’s. Hoagy doesn’t believe for a minute their theory that Tommy is holding the manuscripts for ransom. Which is justified when Tommy shows up at his apartment, soaked with rain and terrified. The manuscripts were stolen from him, he explains, and the guys who stole it threatened his life. Hoagy gives him shelter, and gets to work trying to find out where the documents really are – but there will be bodies hitting the ground before the whole thing is unraveled.

What I liked about The Man in the White Linen Suit was that one of author David Handler’s great strengths is on prominent display. The characters are complex. There are some very nasty people in this story, but they’re three-dimensional. They have moments when you actually sympathize with them. I was entirely fooled by the solution too, so high points for the mystery.

Recommended. Minor cautions for the usual grownup stuff. One political comment, but that’s not too bad in today’s climate.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Couldn’t Miss,’ by David Handler

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Those eyes glared at me disapprovingly. “You’re a bit of a sneaky customer, aren’t you?”

“I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I’ve spent the past several years hanging around with the wrong sort of people.”

“What sort of people would that be?”

“Famous people.”

A cozy mystery. A clever narrator with a scene-stealing basset hound sidekick. Witty narration, and lots of name-dropping. Stewart Hoag, celebrity ghost-writer, is back in The Man Who Couldn’t Miss. Like the other recent books in the series, it’s set back in time, in the early 1990s, when Hoagy is getting his act back together after ruining his writing career (and his marriage) with drugs. Now his actress ex-wife Merilee is allowing him to live in the guest house on her Connecticut farm and he’s working on his long-delayed second novel. Meanwhile, she’s overwhelmed with producing a one-night, benefit production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives, to try to save the local small theater, a kind of shrine where many big actors got their starts. She’s got a cast made up of old friends, now big movie stars, who studied with her in college.

But one more old “friend” shows up – R. J. Romero, the most talented actor of their whole circle, who utterly wrecked his own life and is now a petty criminal. He’s holding something over Merilee’s head, and blackmailing her – and he pulls Hoagy in as a go-between.

Also, there’s unease in the theater. Aside from the challenge of a leaky roof and a stormy forecast, there are tensions between the cast members. It all looks like fairly normal group dynamics – until somebody gets murdered.

I liked The Man Who Couldn’t Miss, though author Handler didn’t go as deep into his characters as I would have wished – it’s not that they don’t surprise you, but we didn’t see the layering here that was on display in some of the other books.

There’s also the issue of Hoagy’s risk-taking. He has a penchant for walking into mortally dangerous situations with no more back-up than his witty dialogue and his dog’s loud barking. Very politically correct, but stupid in the real world.

Nevertheless, all in all, it’s a fun book in an enjoyable series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes,’ by David Handler

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“Patrick swore to me that he didn’t, but I assumed he was lying to me.”

“Why did you assume that?”

“Because everyone lies to me. It’s what they do. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

For a long time, The Man Who Loved Women to Death, the last book I reviewed in the Stewart Hoag series, was indeed the last book in the series. According to his Afterword, author David Handler had decided that today’s cutthroat celebrity culture left no space for Hoagy to ghost memoirs and solve mysteries. But he was persuaded to bring the character back in some flashback books. So The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes takes place somewhere after the first mystery, when Hoagy is established as a celebrity ghost-writer, but has not yet reconciled with Merilee Nash, his actress ex-wife/domestic partner.

Hoagy’s agent sets him up to write a memoir for TV host Monette Aintree (sort of a Martha Stewart character). The spark for the project is a letter Monette has received from her father, Richard Aintree, who wrote a critically acclaimed bestseller, then disappeared entirely following his wife’s suicide. Hoagy also has a personal interest, as Monette’s sister, Reggie, was his first love, a long time ago.

Against his better judgment he heads to Los Angeles to take up residence on Monette’s estate. Immediately the drama begins, stirred up by Monette’s ex-husband, a TV star and steroid freak, and his new girlfriend, a pregnant teenaged sex symbol. Then there’s a murder (of course), and Reggie shows up to support her sister and settle unfinished business with Hoagy.

It was nice to spend time with Hoagy and his basset hound, Lulu, again. I wouldn’t say this was the best in the series (I thought the characterizations weren’t the best, and I found the resolution kind of problematic.) But it was entertaining and amusing, as expected.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Loved Women to Death,’ by David Handler

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“I’ve worked with seriously disturbed individuals a number of times. We just don’t call them disturbed, we call them celebrities.”

The saga of Stewart Hoag continues with The Man Who Loved Women to Death, an outstanding entry in the series, in my opinion. The usual template for a Stewart Hoag story is for him to take a job ghost-writing a memoir for some fictional celebrity. Then a murder happens, and he helps the police solve it, with the assistance of his cartoon-worthy basset hound, Lulu.

But this one is different. He gets a letter from an unknown (and anonymous) writer, asking him to take a look at the first chapter of his murder novel-in-progress. Hoagy is impressed with the promise of the work – but his reaction turns to horror when a young woman is found murdered the next day – killed in exactly the same manner, and with exactly the name, as in the story.

What makes it worse is that certain hints in the manuscript – including the typewriter used, a familiar one to Hoagy – point to the writer being an old friend of his. Tuttle Cash was once a famous athlete, an Ivy League hero who qualified for the major leagues. Now he’s a drug-addicted empty suit, greeting customers at a bar named after him (but not owned by him). With years and failure he has grown bitter and very mean. Nevertheless, Hoagy can’t bring himself to name him to the police, because Tuttle saved his life once.

Author David Handler performs a very nice trick with his Stewart Hoag books. On the surface they’re light mysteries, starring a supercilious modern gentleman hero with a fedora full of opinions on fashion, food, music, and entertainment. Supported by a too-cute doggie companion.

But underneath all that, we discover perceptive stories about very human, very flawed characters, described with considerable sympathy. I was particularly moved in this book by one of them, a beautiful, fragile, abused woman who broke my heart. But there are lots of others.

Recommended. Cautions, as usual, for language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Girl Who Ran Off with Daddy,’ by David Handler

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Think of the big Woody Allen/Soon Yi Previn scandal, where a famous man marries his stepdaughter. Now, instead of Woody Allen, imagine the guy is a legendary macho writer, a cross between Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway. And imagine the wife he abandoned was a famous feminist.

That’s the extreme situation David Handler sets up in The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy, yet another Stewart Hoag mystery. Needless to say, this one involves some pretty cringe-inducing situations – though I think it’s fair for me to tell you the worst parts do get mitigated in the end.

When Hoagy was a young writer, Thor Gibbs was his mentor and inspiration. So when Thor asks him to ghost-write his stepdaughter/girlfriend’s autobiography, giving her side of the story, he doesn’t feel he can say no – creepy though it feels. Hoagy is mostly retired now, living in Connecticut with his ex-wife/current partner, Merilee, and their baby daughter Tracy. His life is fairly idyllic, and he’s not really over the moon about having their farm invaded by an aging Peter Pan with a death wish on a motorcycle, and his seductive 18-year-old lover. Thor Gibbs hates normal living, and none of that is in prospect – until murder occurs.

There’s lots of stuff going on beneath the surface in The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy, and some of it’s actually pretty positive. Especially a subplot involving Hoagy’s father. So if you can get through the initial creeps, you may be glad you read it.

Cautions for language and immature subject matter.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Cancelled HImself,’ by David Handler

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I did believe that. Of course, you must remember that TV and movie people almost always mistake their business friends for real friends. This is partly because they want to believe that everyone they deal with truly loves them. And partly because they have no real friends.

David Handler, author of the Stewart Hoag mysteries, spent some time as a TV sitcom writer. He mines that vein of experience for background material for his mystery, The Man Who Cancelled Himself, in which we once again follow “Hoagy” Hoag, celebrity memoir ghost writer, and his scene-stealing basset hound, Lulu.

The first few Stewart Hoag books seemed to be heavily disguised portraits of actual characters, but as they go on, the author is spreading his net wider. The main character here, Lyle Hednut, is a lot like John Belushi, with some Rosanne Barr and Pee Wee Herman thrown in. He started in improv comedy, and worked his way up to having his own sitcom, playing “Uncle Chubby,” a sort of degenerate Mr. Rogers. The show was leading the ratings until Lyle got arrested under embarrassing circumstances in an adult theater. Now there’s pressure to cancel the show, and the network wants Hoagie to write a book that will give Lyle’s side of things. In order to fit in, he’s added to the series writing staff.

One of the first things Hoagy learns is that Lyle Hudnut is only marginally human. Big, overdramatic, Gargantuan, mercurial, he is a genuine narcissist with manic mood swings, who jumps from woman to woman and terrorizes his co-workers. He tells Hoagy a horrific story of childhood abuse, but Hoagy begins to suspect he’s left important points out. And when someone begins to sabotage the production, real danger presents itself.

This was one of my favorite books in this series, mainly because author Handler does something I never expected – he offers us a pair of characters, husband and wife, who are ordinary middle-class elderly Americans. They are neither well-educated nor stylish. Nevertheless, they are handled with genuine empathy and respect. The character of Hoagy Hoag generally presents himself as something of a snob, a latter-day Lord Peter or Philo Vance. But this was a nice scene. As a middle American, I appreciated it.

There was also an important development in Hoagy’s own life in this story. I was mostly in favor of it, but I thought our hero had been rather badly used. You can judge for yourself.

Pretty good stuff. Cautions for language and some gross mature content.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Boy Who Never Grew Up,’ by David Handler

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I know how to handle stars. The lunch pail ghosts don’t. They treat them like rational, intelligent human beings. I know better.

The adventures of David Handler’s celebrity ghost writer sleuth, Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag (and his excessively anthropomorphic basset hound, Lulu) continue with The Boy Who Never Grew Up.

In most of these books, you can kind of guess who the central “celebrity” is supposed to be – they’re generally based on one or two real-world characters. In the case of The Boy Who Never Grew Up, it’s harder to tell. Author Handler seems to have several Hollywood characters in mind – a bit of Michael Jackson, a bit of Walt Disney, a bit of Steven Spielberg. And the studio depicted doesn’t really resemble anything that exists in our world anymore.

Matthew Wax is (or has been) the biggest producer in Hollywood. A kind of filmmaker-savant, he has made the most popular films in history, and built his own studio, devoted to turning out wholesome, heartwarming fare portraying an idealized American life. He is, however, essentially a big child. He avoids the real world, and even lives on the set where his most successful, family-oriented movies were filmed. With his mother close at hand, keeping a watch on him.

He was married, to Pennyroyal Brim, the actress he discovered to play the cheerleader girlfriend in his movies. But she is divorcing him now, taking their child with her, and through her shark lawyer she is accusing him of various cruelties and perversions. She’s even writing a book about it. So Matthew’s people bring Hoagy in, to write a book from Matthew’s own point of view.

The celebrity subjects Hoagy has dealt with up to now have generally fit the stereotypes – arrogant, thin-skinned, narcissistic. Matthew is rather different. He really is just a nice kid who had a rough childhood and grew up maladjusted. Hoagy not only becomes his friend (how can you resist a guy who owns the car from “Route 66” and lends it to you?), but he works up the personal concern to help Matthew move out of his comfort zone a little.

The whole thing could be kind of heartwarming, like a Michael Wax movie, if there weren’t a murderer lurking around, and if we didn’t get a very shocking revelation of that murderer’s motives in the end.

Also there’s a big twist in Hoagy’s own life, almost as shocking in its own way.

I’d call The Boy Who Never Grew Up one of the better entries in this entertaining series. Moderate cautions for adult language and themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Woman Who Fell From Grace,’ by David Handler

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I got Lulu, my drafty old fifth-floor walk up on Ninety-third Street, and my ego, which recently applied to Congress for statehood.

Rolling along through David Handler’s Stewart Hoag mysteries. I’m going to need to break the monotony soon, but for tonight I have another one to review.

Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, former critically acclaimed novelist, is now reduced to ghost writing books for celebrities. This exposes him to a large number of dysfunctional individuals, and before long somebody always gets murdered. Nevertheless, people keep hiring him. We call this fictional license.

In reading The Woman Who Fell From Grace, you need to think of Gone With the Wind – and you will. Oh, Shenandoah is the name of the book and movie in this alternate reality – a historical romance set not during the Civil War but during the American Revolution. It was a bestseller and a blockbuster film, and the leading man died suddenly the very night the shooting ended. The novelist was killed in a hit and run accident shortly thereafter. But she left notes for a sequel which, under the terms of her will, were sealed for fifty years. The fifty years are up now, and her daughter, Mavis Glaze, is working on the sequel. However, instead of following the notes, she claims to be following psychic instructions from her mother, with bizarre results. So her brothers summon Hoagy to come to Virginia and take her in hand. That’s what he’s good at. This will also involve him attending the anniversary ball, which will give him the opportunity to meet some of his childhood heroes. And his beagle Lulu, as is her wont, will go Hollywood.

There are, of course, skeletons in the closet, the kind that people have killed before, and will kill again, to keep locked up.

The Woman Who Fell From Grace was enjoyable, like the other books in the series. I felt the plot broke down at the end though, where Hoagy (who has a bad habit of insulting people without possessing the fighting skills to protect himself from the consequences) walks into a perilous situation with eyes wide open, and the author has to employ a deus ex machina to rescue him.

Not the best in the series, but entertaining. Moderate cautions for language and adult situations.