Take a heaping portion of Entertainment
Tonight, add a pinch of personal interest from People Magazine,
liberally spice it with plenty of Hollywood gossip, stir in lots of humor and
heat over a fire of passion and murder, and you will have The Reporter by Kelly Lange. The
Reporter is a deliciously scandalous novel about wives, ex-wives,
mistresses, and murder amongst the Hollywood elite.

The Reporter
by Kelly Lange is set amid the glittering lights and sparkling swimming pools
of Hollywood Hills. As the novel opens, Jack Nathanson is dead. While he has
died many times on screen, now he was truly and really dead. He is laid out in
a see-through coffin in all his regal Armani splendor. At this his celebrity
“see and be seen” funeral, however, few are real mournful. His first wife,
Debra Angelo, will not miss him or their constant battles over his
child-rearing practices of their beloved daughter, Gia. His second wife, Maxi
Poole, will not miss him since he dumped her in a rush for the much younger
wife number three. In fact, wife number three, his current wife of less than a
year, Janet Orson, also seems to have reasons of her own not to miss his roving
eyes and wandering hands. Tarya and Irving Zimmerman, his neighbors, will not
miss him. (He was sleeping with Tarya and stiffing Irving on land access
rights.) Nor would he be missed particularly much by Sam Bloom, his
long-suffering business manager, nor by Julian Polo, his over-worked PR agent.
In fact, only his loyal housekeeper, Carlotta Rico, seems to be shedding a few
genuine tears. So who plugged Jack full of holes in his daughter’s bedroom in
his first ex-wife’s beach cottage? When the police haul Debra (wife number one)
out of the funeral pleading her innocence and begging Maxi to look after Gia,
Maxi takes it upon herself to find out who really terminated Jack’s earthly
acting career.

The Reporter
is filled with interesting characters. Jack Nathanson is scandalously portrayed
as the horrid actor with an overactive casting coach. Debra is purrrfectly
painted as the now overly plush former sex kitten of the silver screen. There
are the crazy doings of the dynamic duo of Meg Davis, a drugged up former child
star, and Zahna Cole, Jack’s mistress, speed queen, and late night radio siren.
In fact, in this cast abundantly filled with odd crazies, the character of Maxi
Poole, the book’s heroine, is almost ho-hum. One reviewer claimed that the
greatest fun of this novel is trying to guess who the author had in mind when
she named and described her characters. (Now who might Jack Nathanson be?) For
me the greatest joy was reading the parody of the mores and scandals of the
rich and infamous of Hollywood. Either way, while the book is a serious mystery
with graphic violence, one cannot but read it without at least snickering
through parts of it. (I will fess up to a real belly laugh or two!)

Kelly Lange is a television
journalist and co-hosts of a popular daily news / talk show on CBS show, Women 2 Women. She also hosts her own
three-hour radio show on Sunday nights on KRLA/1110AM. For 28 years, she was
the former anchor and news reporter for KNBC-TV. She began her career as
"Dawn O’Day," aka the "Ladybird" of airborne traffic
reporter on KABC/790 AM. Ms. Lange has received numerous honors and awards,
including an Emmy for Best Los Angeles News Anchorperson. Lange has published
two previous novels, Trophy Wife
(1995) and Gossip (1998). Kelly Lange
currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

The
Reporter is a deadly serious yet humorous mystery that pokes fun at the
stars, their lifestyle and mores, and their entourage and groupies. While the
graphic violence and descriptions of kinky sexual practices may not be every
one’s cup of tea, most readers will find the bulk of this mystery to be quite satirical.
Move over Jackie Collins, Kelly Lange is elbowing her way in! I thoroughly
enjoyed this novel and highly recommended it.

© 2002 Su Terry

Su Terry: Education:
B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S. in Library Science from
Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S. in Religious Studies/Pastoral
Counseling from Fairfield University, a M.Div. in Professional Ministry from
New Brunswick Theological Seminary, a Certificate in Spirituality/Spiritual
Direction from Sacred Heart University. She is a Licensed Minister of the
United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor in Library Science at
Dowling College, Long Island, NY. Interests in Mental Health: She is interested
in the interplay between psychology, biology, and mysticism. Her current area of
research is in the impact of hormonal fluctuation in female Christian mystics.

Categories: Fiction