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Overview
A lot of people have good reason to despise Jason Saylin. He has earned a reputation as New York’s most scathing—and powerful—theater critic. After-parties at his penthouse apartment are the most exclusive in the city. His knack for pointing out the key flaws of any production crushes budding starlets and delights readers. And his gossip columns are required reading for anyone aspiring to become someone on Broadway. Still, Jason has one weakness: an illness that he is desperate to hide. His illness is revealed in grandiose fashion when Jason staggers into a room during a party and falls dead on the floor. A man as controversial as Jason Saylin has a long list of detractors, and it is up to the intrepid Jocelyn O’Roarke to find answers. With the help of her friends (and lover) in the NYPD, New York’s greatest triple threat—actor-singer-detective—must get to the heart of a mystery that has taken center stage in the theater world. First Hit of the Season is the second book in the Jocelyn O’Roarke mystery series, which also includes Murder on Cue and Death Mask.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480436886 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 07/30/2013 |
| Series: | The Jocelyn O'Roarke Mysteries , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | NOOK Book |
| Pages: | 179 |
| Sales rank: | 692,418 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
By the time Vanities finally closed, there were a lot of people she wanted to kill, and hence, she wrote her debut mystery, Murder on Cue, on a grant of sorts from the New York State Department of Labor. It was the first of six novels featuring actress Jocelyn O’Roarke, whom the New Yorker dubbed “an artsy Philip Marlowe.”
While writing her novels, Dentinger managed Murder Ink, a preeminent mystery bookstore in New York City, for eight years. In October of 1999, Dentinger became senior editor of the Mystery Guild Book Club. In 2005, she was made editor in chief, a position she held until December, 2013.
Read an Excerpt
First Hit of the Season
A Jocelyn O'Roarke Mystery
By Jane Dentinger
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1984 Jane DentingerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3688-6
CHAPTER 1
Metropolitan Magazine
February 11, 1983
GARBLED GABLER
In an uncertain life, there are several things that I can bank on. Amongst them are death and taxes, a sanitation workers' strike during the hottest week of summer and the certitude that each new theatre season will offer at least one revival of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. This year the honors have been done by the Above Boards Theatre, an Off-Broadway company that has shown great promise of late, under the astute direction of Franklin Allen. And, indeed, Mr. Allen's Hedda makes enormous promises but welches on all of them in the end.
Allen's direction is not the culprit here; his staging is fine and flowing and manages to draw the maximum of ironic humor from a dark text in some cleverly pointed scenes. Neither can fault be found with Pia Zeldon's set, nor Marc Carson's lighting, both of which contrive successfully to suggest space and alienation, color and confinement. The supporting cast is uniformly fine, especially David Lassiter's sensually neurotic Lövborg and Keith Thomas's perversely benign Tesman.
What forfeits this production to a confined doom is the casting of Irene Ingersoll in the title role. Miss Ingersoll, who pleased some in recent pieces at the Public, may be of Nordic extraction but her rendering (or should I say rending?) of Hedda is pure Great Neck. Several years too old for the part—which even Carson's cosmeticized lighting can't conceal—Ingersoll supplants the banked fires of Hedda's sexual repression with premenopausal angst. The only convincing thing in her performance is the suggestion of Hedda's pregnancy, thanks to twenty-odd pounds of excess adipose tissue, which is the bulk of Miss Ingersoll's contribution to the play ... and I do mean bulk.
"A bad day at Black Rock."
Jocelyn O'Roarke slugged down the rest of her orange juice and Perrier, reached for the telephone and slowly dialed Irene Ingersoll's number. Several unanswered rings gave her faint hope that no one was home and that this "mercy" call could be avoided or at least postponed, but a pick up at the other end killed her craven fantasy. A masculine voice answered.
"Hello—and this better be good."
"Well, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I guess. Marc, it's Jocelyn, is Irene there?"
"Yeah, just barely. You read Saylin's review?"
"Uh-huh. Fortunately I had breakfast first. How's she doing?"
"Not so hot, Josh. She's a little plastered, to tell the truth."
"God, Marc, it's only ten-thirty!"
"I know, I know. I couldn't stop her. She got the review two hours ago and proceeded to breakfast on pale yellow screwdrivers. What can I tell you?"
"Well, does she want to talk? If not, I can call back later."
"No, don't do that. Hold on a sec and I'll see if she's up to it."
Marc Carson set down the receiver and went in search of Irene while Jocelyn seethed at the other end and lit a verboten morning cigarette. It wasn't bad enough that Saylin had massacred Irene's performance but he had to go that petty step further and gibe at Irene's relationship with a younger man with that cutting "cosmetic lighting" line, knowing full well that he was delivering a karate chop to a sore point. Jason Saylin's trouble was and had always been that he didn't know where professional critiquing left off and personal trashing began. Jocelyn's ruminations were ended by the clunk of the phone hitting the floor and being clumsily retrieved, followed by an unmistakably distinctive voice, low and mellifluously husky, slurring out a line of seaworthy profanities.
"That walking asshole! Who the hell does he think he is?"
"Irene, you know what they say—those who can do. Those who can't critique. Besides ..."
"Little shit-eating, misogynist faggot. Hell no! He doesn't even have the good taste to be a faggot. He screws women ... boy, does he ever! Engaged to that anemic little Southern belle, right? Why the hell doesn't he restrict his 'golden showers' to her? Ol' Courtney probably loves 'em. I, however, am not enthused, ya know?"
At this point Irene's tirade ran out of steam and Jocelyn could hear the sound of muffled sobbing through the wires.
Jocelyn said gently, "Irene, it's just one snide man's opinion. The other reviews were ..."
"The other reviews don't count—not as much! Hell, Josh, you know that. And we were hoping to move this one to Broadway. I wanted it so much for Marc and ... oh, shit, shit. What am I going to do?"
More muffled sobs. Jocelyn stubbed out her cigarette and prepared to administer the "cold splash," a technique she'd newly evolved while coaching actors; it consisted of equal parts positive reinforcement and the harsh facts of show business.
"Okay, I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're going to that theatre tonight and giving the same performance that you've been giving—which is fresh, ferocious, and riveting. And you are going to behave as if nothing's happened—unless you want Saylin to win—because you know, if you want this show to move, the most important factors are word-of-mouth and box office. The word-of-mouth is currently fantastic. Hell, Mike Nichols was there last time I saw the show! And your box office is growing nightly. Hedda can go to Broadway with this kind of momentum. And if it does, Jason Saylin will have second thoughts about dumping on it twice. It would make him look like the jerk that he is."
There was a breathy pause. "You think so?"
"You bet I do."
"Josh, I'm afraid."
"Who isn't? It's a scary business. What do you want?"
"My mommy," Irene replied, with a short, embarrassed laugh that told Jocelyn that she was revealing a simple truth.
"That I can't supply, but how about a swim at my club on Monday and I'll blow you to lunch at the Gardenia after?"
"Josh, that would be grand, but don't feel you have to ..."
"Of course I have to. I'm working on my maternal merit badge for Girl Scouts. You want to see me make Eagle, don't you?"
"That's for Boy Scouts."
"Screw you! Then I'll make Lamed Dove. Okay?"
"Okay. See you Monday."
Thus it came to pass that Jocelyn O'Roarke, actress, director and sometimes drama coach, came to be one of the few within the New York theatrical circle to actually witness what was later referred to as the infamous Fettuccine Fiasco.
Jocelyn's health club was situated inside Manhattan Plaza, a block-wide, federally funded housing project on Forty-third Street between Ninth and Tenth, reserved solely for the sheltering of the underprivileged—in this case, actors and other hard- working yet frequently unemployed members of the theatrical community. Manhattan Plaza, in the few years since its construction, had made a huge and beneficial impact on this Hell's Kitchen section of New York. It provided a blessed alternative to the starving-in-attics type of actor by setting monthly rents in accordance with the individual tenant's income. Theoretically, Jocelyn thought the Plaza was a noble enterprise; emotionally, she felt it preferable to walk barefoot over burning coals than to come home each night to an elevator full of fellow thespians discussing agents, acting classes and what roles "I've been submitted for." Her gut feeling was that actors are not meant to live in close proximity and that low rents could be a seductive inverse incentive for those neurotic talents, which the theatre is chock full of, who are all too comfortable with failure.
However, she loved the health club, which had the best swimming pool in New York. Even more, she loved the fact that after doing her virtuous fifty-four laps she could run up one flight of stairs to the Gardenia Club, a small and cozily intimate restaurant, and stuff herself with ceviche and great pasta. The fact that Irene and Marc shared a large one-bedroom apartment on the fifteenth floor of the complex made it the ideal rendezvous.
Irene Ingersoll was waiting for her in the club lobby. Despite the fact that she had known Irene well for over eight years and known her in all her infinite variety—commanding and regal onstage, maudlin and in her cups in a West Side bar, bitchy and magnanimous with her intimates—Jocelyn never failed to be a little awestruck at each encounter. Prone to one of those silly biases, Jocelyn had always thought blond women a little anemic and "lightweight" until she'd met Irene, whose five-foot ten-inch frame, ash-blond hair and sell-your-soul-to-have-it bone structure reordered her conceptions. Heavy or slender—and Irene's weight did tend to fluctuate—she was one of the most sensual, vital and intelligent women that Jocelyn had ever met. She could also be a monumental pain in the ass, as Jocelyn had discovered when she directed her in a workshop production of Mother Courage, but her ferocious dedication and irreverent humor made her worth the trouble.
"Aha! O'Roarke, I've got one for you. What did the leper say to the prostitute?"
"Keep the tip."
"Oh shit! You're no fun. Let's go swim."
Glad to see that her friend was not in a brooding mood, Jocelyn quickly assented and was soon doing her fifty-four hard laps alongside Irene's leisurely breaststrokes—the perfect juxtaposition of athletics and élan. Jocelyn emerged wet and the trimmer of the two but was fully aware that the gaze of every poolside man was firmly fixed on Irene's undulating return to the showers.
Forty-five minutes later two glowingly healthy and well-groomed actresses sat across from each other in the Gardenia Club, sipping white wine and perusing their menus. Irene shot Jocelyn a wicked grin.
"Eh, O'Roarke, we look pretty damn spiffy, n'est-ce pas?"
"Indeed, we do ... and we damn well better!"
"God, yes. I love living here, but when I lived down in the Village I used to schlep around the neighborhood all day in jeans, a work shirt and no makeup. Here, I can't even go out to get the paper in the morning without getting duded up. I mean, what if Tennessee Williams got in the elevator! Then I'd never get to play Blanche."
"Don't worry, I'll put in a good word for you," Jocelyn said nonchalantly while lighting a cigarette. Irene raised an incredulous eyebrow.
"Are you serious or did you stay in the sauna too long?"
Jocelyn laughed. "I did have drinks with him ... here, as a matter of fact. I was celebrating my emancipation from my old agent, Albert 'The Albatross' Carnelli, with a few friends and a lot of champagne and Williams was by himself at the bar, so I invited him to join us."
"And he did?!"
"Sure he did. He's a sweet man and, given enough champagne, I'm damned irresistible."
"What did you talk about?"
"Well, it was slow going at first. Everybody was appalled by my cheek and a little awestruck. But he and I got into a long, earnest conversation about the best way to keep your goggles from fogging up in the pool. He'd been having trouble with his, you see, and I told him that a little spit in the lenses would do the trick every time. He seemed to think that was very funny, for some reason."
Slowly Irene said, "You talked to Tennessee Williams about spitting on goggles?"
"Yeah, that's right. Works, too."
"Jocelyn, I know you are very gifted in your chosen field, but are you sure you wouldn't be happier as a gym instructress?"
"Could be. Let's order. I'm starved."
It was shaping up to be a better luncheon than Jocelyn had expected. Irene made no mention of Saylin's devastating review. Instead, she flirted outrageously with the young waiter, who had seen her Hedda the week before and was gratifyingly enthralled, and gossiped about all their mutual acquaintances who had come to the show. Jocelyn had just savored her first bite of a delicious crabmeat salad and was about to ask Irene for a taste of her fettuccine when she spied, over Irene's shoulder, the only sight in the world capable of killing her appetite at that moment—Jason Saylin entering the dining room with his fiancée, Courtney Mason, a lithe and stunning redhead. This was doubly bad, for Jocelyn knew Courtney, a sometime actress, from a show they had done together five years ago. Even if Jocelyn could keep Irene from noticing Saylin, could she also keep Courtney from noticing her? Courtney came from Georgia and was a Southern belle of the old school. If she sighted Jocelyn, her sense of noblesse oblige, or noblesse of bilge, as Jocelyn thought of it, would demand that she come over to "say hey."
Jocelyn ducked her head and took a large sip of Chablis before she realized that Irene was asking her a question.
"So what's up with him?"
"Hmm? Him who?"
"Him who! Your knight in shining armor, you nit. That detective fellow, Gerrard, who helped you get your neck out of a noose when Harriet Weldon was killed. Does that ring a bell?"
"Oh, Phillip, yeah."
"Don't you 'oh, Phillip, yeah' me, missy. And don't you try to hold out on me, either. I keep my ear clued to the grapevine and word has it that Rocky O'Roarke had finally fallen down the well, but good. Hell, you dropped Kevin Kern for this guy. He must be something! So tell."
She did not want to talk about Phillip Gerrard, especially at this moment. But, if it would keep Irene diverted, she had little choice.
"We still see each other."
Irene's elegantly arched eyebrow conveyed infinite derision.
"Well, how nice. How civil. Means nothing! Come on, Josh, give!"
Distraught, Jocelyn snapped, "There's nothing to give, Irene! He's not someone you can summarize easily. And it's not a relationship that's easy to describe. Hell, it's not an easy relationship, period."
Irene said patiently, "Jocelyn, as long as I've known you, there's always been one topic on which you are infinitely articulate and that is—men. You'll have to do better than this."
"Alright, alright. Phillip is ... a lot of the things that I've always looked for in a man. He's smart and funny and insightful ... and not an actor. He's extremely good at what he does and he cares about it, as much as I care about what I do, which is ... great."
"Gotcha. And there's something un-great behind that 'great.' What is it?"
"Oh shit, it sounds so clichéd! We live in two different worlds. I deal in 'what if and he deals in 'what is.' I like to go to bed at three and he has to be up by seven. When he's on a tough case, I won't see him for days on end. Then we arrange to meet for dinner, and I'm caught up with how to get a laugh at the end of act two and he's thinking about the body of a battered child that he saw that morning. So he's tired and doesn't want to hear about the laugh in act two and I'm all keyed up and, frankly, can't bear to hear about the dead child because it's too awful, and I'm a coward. Then I feel guilty and he feels depressed. And that's what's not great."
"But do you love him?"
Jocelyn laughed sadly. This conversation and her own unexpected outpourings had almost taken her mind off the couple sitting behind them.
"Oh, Irenie, fairy princess, that is not the penultimate question. I respect Phillip and care for him ... I quite possibly do love him. The real question is, Am I good for him? Most times, lately, I feel like I'm not."
Irene looked thoughtfully at the piece of pasta that she was gracefully twirling around her fork before replying. "You know, Josh, I'm not a great one for telling people what to do. But, in this one case, I'd just like to say—"
Whatever it was that Irene was about to say Jocelyn never found out. At that instant an uproarious laugh broke out from the neighboring table. Irene jerked her head around and saw her nemesis sitting behind her. What was worse, she heard him.
"I'm not exaggerating, Courtney. They should've called it Hedda, Dearest. Ingersoll has no finesse. It was just two hours of watching a Nordic cow in heat—udder-ly depressing! Just once, I'd like to see a show cast on merit alone. The only reason Irene's playing Hedda is because Franklin Allen has a yen for her little playfellow, Carson. Now, there must be an easier way to seduce the boy. Allen could've just waited for Irene to get even fatter."
It was a moment that Jocelyn would forever remember in slow motion—the languid toss of Saylin's head, the abrupt catch of breath as Courtney's glance met hers and the deep timber of Irene's voice, which seemed to come from far away. "Well, that tears it."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from First Hit of the Season by Jane Dentinger. Copyright © 1984 Jane Dentinger. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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