Randisi's entertaining fourth Rat Pack mystery (after 2008's Hey There, You with the Gun in Your Hand
) once again displays Vegas pit boss Eddie Gianelli's skill at discreetly getting his eminent friends out of embarrassing jams. In early 1962, Dean Martin asks Eddie to help a fragile Marilyn Monroe, who's worried she's being followed and is feeling guilty she contributed to the death of her ailing co-star, Clark Gable, from The Misfits
by making him wait too long on the set. The Rat Pack, which also includes Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., plays second fiddle as Gianelli tries to protect Monroe from myriad problems real and imaginary. The Brooklyn-born Gianelli, a humble straight shooter who can call on friends in high and low places, needs both when one friend helping him disappears and another ends up in the hospital. Randisi clothes a factual skeleton of information about his famous characters with an artful tapestry of vivid imagination. (Sept.)
