CHEATING AT SOLITAIRE

A slyly cerebral indictment of the cult of celebrity.

Margaret’s Harbor, old money’s summer playground, is suffering through the making of a less than major motion picture when a nor’easter hits the island, shutting down production. The hordes of paparazzi have taken their fill of Kendra, Arrow and Marcey prancing around with no underwear, sipping champagne cocktails and designer drugs, when indulged Arrow’s boy toy is shot dead in his purple truck and Arrow is arrested. Called in to bolster the authorities’ know-how, Gregor Demarkian (Glass Houses, 2007, etc.) finds a respite from the brouhaha surrounding his upcoming Cavanaugh Street wedding to the irascible Bennis Hannaford. But then a local photographer has his hand butchered, and a gun, possibly a murder weapon, turns up under the couch cushions of a sensible author of historical compendiums now being courted by Gregor’s old army buddy and current movie star, Scotsman Stewart Gordon. Kendra, a Paris Hilton clone, winds up at the bottom of a flight of stairs with her pretty head twisted backward. And frenzied paparazzi destroy the crime scene to get lurid shots for the tabloids.

With wry intelligence, Haddam explores the reasons why we reach for those magazines at the checkout counter, dog the rich and the overpublicized and worship the famous for being famous. Read this and liberate yourself from Page Six and TMZ.