BOOK REVIEW - Fallen Star

FALLEN STAR

By Lee Goldberg

Thomas and Mercer, 277p.

Lee Goldberg is a best-selling mystery novelist and a well-known television writer/producer/creator.  You might know him from his hit series Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub, or Diagnosis: Murder, starring Dick Van Dyke, among others.

Fallen Star is the latest adventure in his Eve Ronin series. Eve and her partner, Duncan Pavone, are detectives from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Lost Hills Station, located on the western edge of the county. Eve’s cross to bear is that she’s young, female, and the subject of a hit television series based on her exploits as a sheriff’s deputy. It didn’t hurt that she was able to leverage that fame into a premature detective's badge and a hefty fee from the film company to tell her story, but it puts her at odds with the rest of her department. Lee obviously writes from what he knows best, intertwining police work and Hollywood business as they often are in this town, and setting it in his own backyard of Calabasas.

This episode opens with the off-duty young detective single-handedly stopping and arresting a shoplifting flash mob at her local beauty supply store. A few pages later, she’s first at the scene of a helicopter crash downhill from her home, which quickly turns into a murder investigation. Fate just seems to place Eve wherever the action is.

Along the way, a corpse is discovered packed in an oil drum, who, it turns out, is connected to the downed helicopter victims, a collection of movie and real estate actors. There’s also political intrigue, tied to the first Eve Ronin book, that has to do with corruption in the department that implicates Eve. There’s a lot of plot and a lot of action, and it all moves pell-mell through the pages. It’s a hard book to put down, as are all of Lee’s novels, but the writing is clear and concise and leaves you wanting more. Fortunately for us, there’s another Eve Ronin adventure due out later this year.