Hollywood Requiem

The pseudonymous Freeborn's ( The Stark Truth ) second novel teeters despite his endearingly chatty, amusing style. Ghostwriter Daniel Springer lives in Manhattan with his on-again-off-again wife, who is known as the Fawn. Penning the ``autobiography'' of Nina Hardy, a beautiful, reclusive actress who had been his adolescent idol, Springer jets between New York and Los Angeles for interviews, meetings and negotiations. In the process, he loses his wife to his publisher's brother, falls in love (again) with Hardy, and must come to terms with the fact that his paramour is not at all the woman he thought her to be. The last few chapters, surprising, suspenseful, often humorous and almost always touching, only partially redeem the previously tepid narrative. (May)