Green Light for Murder

Heywood Gould

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781440561238
• eBook ISBN:
  9781440561245
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A mad director, off his meds, is making a movie about how he murders the producers who ruined his career. The movie is in his mind. The murders are real.Tommy Veasy, a pot-smoking homicide detective--our hero--who writes poetry to help him solve cases and ward off despair, thinks he sees a pattern in these seemingly accidental deaths. His colleagues think he's being dramatic.But the bodies keep piling up.The staff of a syndicated TV show in its tenth year, formerly an international hit but now only being aired in Montenegro and Botswana, worries about how they will maintain their Hollywood lifestyles when they become unemployable. How will the producer finance his two-hooker-a-weekend habit? How will the staff writer pay private school tuition, an underwater mortgage, tennis club dues, the housekeeper, the gardener, cable TV bills, the couples' therapist, et al.?Not a big problem: the mad director has planted a bomb in the office phone and is frantically trying to set it off.And meanwhile, a home invader keeps invading the wrong homes, to everyone's perplexity.In other words: it's just another day in paradise.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Cast of Characters
• Fade up on …: The Madman and His Imaginary Film Crew
• Dissolve to: The Poet Making Love
• The Next Morning
• Establish the Lonely Commander
• Interior—the Madman’s Garage
• An Actuarial Fact
• Location Scout
• Smells Like Murder
• Exterior—Mitch Helfand’s House—Night.
• Pillow Talk
• An Ultimatum
• Banished to a Burglary
• Crew Call
• The Home Invasion that Went Terribly Wrong
• Crime Wave in Paradise
• The Madman Plots His : Next Murder
• The Commander Sets a Trap
• Exterior—Gary London’s House—Thursday Night
• Veasy Throws a Curve
• Three Case Pileup
• Establish the Unsuspecting Victim
• Freeway to Revenge
• Better Solving through Technology
• The Madman Plants the Bomb
• Backstory of an Invisible
• A Ticking Clock
• Love Interest
• Caught in the Act
• Where there’s a Will there’s a Relative
• Production Meeting
• Straggling Writers
• A Warning Unheeded
• Intercut
• Cut to Eloise’s Screensaver
• Victim Ex Machina
• An Unhappy Family
• The Plot Sickens
• Surprised Witness
• Doing Lunch
• Genre Confusion
• Close-up of a Printout
• Scrolling Down Memory Lane
• This One is the Keeper
• Lester’s Last Words
• From Noir to Gore
• Good Call
• Zack Panics
• Just the Facts, Ma’am
• The Insanity Clause
• Scent of a Perp
• A Madman’s Memory
• Veasy Takes a Stab
• Lester Takes a Call
• A Madman’s Documentary
• Entrapment
• Third Time’s the Charm
• The End Begins
• Honeyed Portal
• Outtakes
• Cop on the Beach
• Best Idea Wins
• Nobody Likes a Smartass
• The Missing Link
• Bad News
• Cyber Noir
• Brainwatching
• Act Three
• Why They Pay the Big Bucks
• Stakeout in Beverly Hills
• Photo Ops
• Raising the Stakes
• Red Herring
• Lighting the Fuse
• Taking Control
• Eloise Works a Miracle
• The Fuse is Burning
• No Time for Backstory
• Cliffhanger
• Martini Take Two
• Feel-Good Finish
• Dissolve to the Producer
• Cut to the Commander
• The Noir Hero Gets the Girl
• Copyright