The Starlets

In their second collaboration (after The Antiquity Affair), Kelly and Thorne brilliantly capture both the glamour and grit of Golden Age Hollywood and then deftly fold this into an entertaining plot imbued with just the right measure of danger. It’s bad enough that Lottie Lawrence stole Vivienne Rhodes’s almost-fiancé Teddy Walters and her chance at an Oscar. Now Lottie has managed to get her claws into the leading role in Apex Pictures’ A Thousand Ships too! Well, if Jack Gallo, the president of Apex Pictures, thinks Vivienne is going to play second fiddle to Lottie, he has another thing coming. However, before Vivienne can get off of Tavalli Island, where the picture is being filmed, she stumbles across something dangerous going on with the production. Even more horrifying is that the only one who can help Vivienne is the man- and scene-stealing Lottie. Alongside the madcap plot, this novel’s fabulously fun icing on the cake is the friendship that develops between Vivienne and Lottie, which becomes almost a distaff version of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their “Road” pictures.