Then I popped open a bottle of lager and watched part eight of a sixteen-part series on BBC 1 called Giant Worms of the Sea. Whoever thinks British television has it all over American TV has never actually watched any.

David Handler returns with his ghost-writer hero, Stuart “Hoagie” Hoag, in the second series installment, The Man Who Lived By Night. This one takes him into the treacherous world of British Rock ‘n Roll.

Tristam Scarr is his new interviewee. Lead singer of a top British group called Us (a little like the Rolling Stones, a little like the Who), Scarr lived a life of excess and notoriety, and is now one of two survivors of a group that numbered four at its peak. He lives like a hermit in a palatial house on a massive English estate, but is a wizened shell of himself, subsisting on baby food. He wants to tell his life’s story – including his shocking allegation that the two group members who died young were in fact murdered.

Hoagie, accompanied as always by his faithful, fish-eating beagle, Lulu (aren’t there quarantine rules for bringing animals into the UK?) moves in with Scarr and begins the interviews. But he has an ulterior motive for being there – his ex-wife Merrilee is starring in a London play, and their sparks re-ignite (is it adultery to sleep with your ex-wife?). As in the previous novel, somebody appears to threaten Hoagie (and, even worse, Lulu), but he will persevere and bring the shocking truth to light in the end. In considerable style.

I’m not as interested in the rock world as I am in Hollywood, so this book was slightly less interesting to me than the previous one. But enough sacred cows got poked here that I still had a good time (though it’s weird to read a book of this vintage and see celebrities now dead or aged described [sometimes lampooned] as young, sexy, and current).

Recommended. Lots of fun. Not too much objectionable stuff.