DIRT  by Stuart Woods


Review #25
Main Character: Stone Barrington, ex-cop, attorney, seeker of bad guys.

Stone Barrington, the suave ex-cop-attorney-hero gets involved in a blackmail scheme involving Amanda Dart, a much-feared, nationally syndicated gossip columnist. After Amanda is photographed in bed in a Manhattan hotel with a married real-estate magnate, a fax headlined "DIRT" and presenting both the photo and details of Amanda's tryst is sent to a weighty list of prominent people and major media outlets.

The DIRT fax-web quickly expands to snare the gay but closeted editor of a sleazy L.A. tabloid. When Stone is hired by Amanda to sniff out who's spilling the beans about these jealously guarded privacies, one of his operatives, a retired N.Y.C. cop, is murdered. The intrigue deepens when one of the suspects is identified as closely resembling a male model in a Vanity Fair cologne ad.

This is the usual good mystery for which Stuart Woods is known. However, I found more sex scenes and bad language than is usual in his books. It’s still a good twisty mystery and you can always skip over any objectionable contents you don't want to read.