THE BRIGHT SILVER STAR
by David Handler
Sex in the suburbs.
Don’t tell anyone, but everyone in Dorset is sleeping around. Patrician disciplinarian Dodge Crockett is going in for S&M with ex-junkie, barely ex-teen Becca, his daughter Esme’s best friend. His cool blond wife Martine is meeting Book Schnook owner Jeff Wachtell, separated from his wife Abby, a famous children’s-book author, who had a brief fling with Tito Molina, the tormented teenaged idol movie star now married to Esme, a recent Oscar winner who also sleeps with Jeff. Will Durslag and his wife Donna, partners in a foodie emporium, are faithful only because transplanted New York film critic Mitch Berger turned her down, staying true to his love, state trooper Desiree Mitry (The Hot Pink Farmhouse, 2002, etc.). More beds heat up until Tito, who punched out Mitch over a bad review of his latest movie, falls over a cliff, and Donna dies in a hot-sheets motel. Des’s former law enforcement partner Rico and his new partner, big-bosomed Yolie, in town to tidy up, get almost nowhere, even with Des riding shotgun, and it’s up to Mitch to write finis to the sad love-gone-awry script.
Not exactly a testimonial to marriage or a paean to suburban morality. Or to clever plotting either, but if you won’t mind that the murderer is apparent very early on, a nicely delineated study of sins that are usually whispered about, at least in Connecticut.