Following hot on the heels of The James Dean Affair and The Elvis and Marilyn Affair, his latest eulogizes the murdered Beatle, the story split between Lennon's own time and a huge, mob-inspired John Lennon Imagine That! Memorial Rock Festival in 2001. Making their third appearance are Levinson's series protagonists, newspaperman Neil Gulliver and TV actress Stevie Marriner, known as the "Sex Queen of the Soaps."

Gulliver covered Lennon's death, and now he and Stevie find themselves appearing in the massive festival in his honor. Someone doesn't want them around, though, and will kill to keep them away. Ironically, among the parade of stock supporting characters crooks, assassins, drunken Indians, politicians, actors, sinister Treasury agents and "Feebies" (FBI agents) Lennon himself is only peripheral. He is given occasional lines, once at an earlier festival: "They have a bloody foogin' concert in me honor to raise money to wipe out weapons, and it brings on one gun going off after the bleeding next." It may be news that Mark David Chapman, who shot him, had been hired to shoot President-elect "Dutch" Reagan instead.

Enough names are dropped to fill an agent's Rolodex (including those in a lengthy author's note), and gags abound, but more attention to plot would have been helpful for the bewildered reader.

From Library Journal: Series protagonist Neil Gulliver lost his first job because of John Lennon's murder. Now, Gulliver is a famous L.A. journalist who lives with (but is divorced from) soap star Stevie Marriner. Because of their involvement in a previous case (The James Dean Affair), they try to lie low but instead become murder targets when a Treasury agent insists they appear at a recently revived Lennon tribute. Apparently a mobster is using the event to launder his ill-gotten gains, but further complicationsironic and otherwisequickly ensue. Wonderful dialog, great plotting, plentiful Hollywood tidbits, and literate prose; strongly recommended.

 Forge Books 0-312-87902-4 / 9780312879020
Hardcover As New Condition 

Price: 20.79 USD