SO PRETTY IT HURTS

Celebrity-crime writer Bailey Weggins (Over Her Dead Body, 2005, etc.) returns for another round of crime in which she gets a mite too close to the celebrities.

When her current Mr. Right, Beau Regan, announces that maybe he’ll be back from his documentary shoot by Saturday night and maybe he won’t, Bailey’s miffed enough for some gentle retaliation: She’ll accept her best bud Jessie Pendergrass’ invitation to join her at record producer Scott Cohen’s bucolic upstate place for the weekend. Bad move. A combination of winter weather and a power outage strands the B-list guests in the converted barn; Scott whispers to Jessie that he’d love to try a threesome with Bailey; and, oh yeah, the headline guest, veteran model Devon Barr, dies of an unexplained heart attack. Since it’s Bailey’s job to explain the inexplicable for Buzz, she’s quizzing Devon’s agent Cap Darby, his wife Whitney, Devon’s booker Christian Hayes, Devon’s model friend Tory Hart and Tory’s rocker boyfriend Tommy Quinn about what they saw and heard and know even before the lights come back on and the party can return to the Big Apple, where secrets will be disclosed and tension will fizzle—or rather be recalled to its roots. Instead of asking which bland celebrity fed anorexic Devon the diuretic that killed her, fans can noodle over the larger questions of whether a blackmail accusation will get Bailey sacked from Buzz and whether she and her Beau really have what it takes for the long haul. Half And Then There Were None, and half relationship primer.