Hollywood Stuff - (Jane Wheel Mysteries) by Sharon Fiffer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

She was a monastic person, one who would be happy to live as a recluse, a hermit . . . if only the other caves would hold occasional yard sales. Ay, there was the rub. Jane had to put up with all those other people because people begat stuff, and stuff, for Jane, was what brought people palatably to life. It made others interesting, warm, human. It was what people kept and what they discarded that guided Jane through the confusion of human emotions. But how could Jane go along on her anonymously merry way, scouting junk in alleys and yards, on rummage sale tables, and auction house floors, if she was involved in some ego-wrenching nonsense in, for the love of Pete, Hollywood?

Soon after a TV magazine profiles antique collector Jane Wheel for her role as an amateur sleuth, her story catches the eye of Wren Bixby, owner of Bix Pix Flix in Los Angeles. Bixby wants the rights to Jane's story for her offbeat independent film company and eventually persuades Jane to leave behind her newfound hometown celebrity in Kankakee, Illinois, and head west for Hollywood.
But Jane's time in Tinseltown is interrupted when she discovers that someone has targeted Bix and her partners, and Jane resumes her role as detective, determined to stop a killer.
In Hollywood Stuff, Sharon Fiffer captures the light and dark sides of Hollywood as Jane discovers that in the buying and selling of Hollywood memories and memorabilia, it's a murderous marketplace where the price can kill.

Review Quotes

"It's [the] loving attention to the details of small-town life that makes Sharon Fiffer's books about Wheel...so original and fascinating." --Chicago Tribune on BURIED STUFF

"Quirky characters, intriguing family relationships, antique lore, and the history of Kankakee are all entwined in this entertaining mystery." --Booklist on BURIED STUFF

"Not even John O'Hara could have objectified that social divide faster or neater." --Chicago Tribune on WRONG STUFF

About the Author

Sharon Fiffer collects buttons, Bakelite, pottery, vintage potholders, keys, locks, and more dead guy's stuff. The author of the Jane Wheel mysteries, including Killer Stuff and The Wrong Stuff, Sharon Fiffer has also co-edited the anthologies Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own, Body, and Family: American Writers Remember Their Own and written Imagining America.