Hollywood Heroes

Barry Ashford, star of Doctors and Lovers, a TV soap opera, is hit by a car and killed after a cast party. Most everyone on the set dislikes Ashford, a vain, ambitious, nasty man, so when the police label his death a hit-and-run accident, Ashford's pleasant girlfriend, Cynthia Walcott, hires private detective Ace Carpenter to investigate. The trail to the killers, and the complex reasons for the murder, leads through many sleazy, power-hungry Hollywood lives and has its roots in Ashford's childhood friendships in Colorado. Caine seeks to evoke Raymond Chandler in this mystery (to the extent of naming Carpenter's dog ""Marlowe''). While Caine's plotting and action are up to par, his style does not compare with the master's. (``Her spirits, as well as her tits and ass, were beginning to sag more than a little.'') (June)