A Marylin Monroe lookalike married to a handsome movie star (Rock Hudson's name is never mentioned, but the comparison is implicit) is snatched. The Beverly Hills cops are told to help with the ransom drop without making any waves. But the kidnapping may not be what it appears.So far, so 1970s TV cop show predictable. Ho-hum, thought I. However there are a couple of interesting, unexpected twists in the tale, though I personally found the ending dissatisfying. I was annoyed and incredulous that everyone would refer to the kidnapped beauty as "the Angel" instead of just "Angel", even though she is supposedly a mystery woman without a past. Obviously she did not "drop from heaven", and people would call her Angel as a name, not a title. I know all about the Hollywood legends created to obfuscate the origins of certain movie stars, but this one is a little thick for the early 1980s, when the book was published. (Granted, that was before the Internet, when the urban legend started circulating about Mel Gibson's supposed "total facial reconstruction" etc.)I still can't quite figure out why Cunningham (the nom de plume of Howard Fast) chose a Japanese police detective as his protagonist. Masuto is a "nisei" who has never been to Japan; neither has the author had much to do with any real Asians, and it shows. There are very few references to Asian-American culture beyond the visit to the zendo and his low opinion of LA Japanese restaurants. His wife shows up in one scene and the kids are nowhere to be seen. The "Japanese proverb" his cousin quotes about Kati's participation in a "nisei consciousness raising group" sounds more Irish than Japanese: "When you salt the kettle too much, it's easy to spoil the stew," stew not being a real part of Japanese cuisine. I'm also a bit surprised that Fast/Cunningham wasn't aware that by 1982 "consciousness raising groups" were totally passé. There's a curious (or perhaps not) emphasis on Jewishness--perhaps not so surprising as the author is/was himself Jewish: Masuto's partner is Jewish, several of the wealthy suspects/witnesses are Jewish, the star's cook is a Holocaust survivor...and for some strange reason the racist chauffer refers to the African American maid as "that black Jew." Write what you know, I guess...but the insistent repetition of the word was curious.There is a curious thread of robbery that goes nowhere--a kid breaks into the Masuto house in the first scene, two men try to mug Masuto on the street, and the Chief's car is stolen--none of these lead to anything, kind of like those filler scenes in a TV show.An OK summer read that didn't leave me scratching my head.
Our protagonist, Masao Masuto, is a police detective in Beverly Hills. The police are informed that a movie star's wife has been kidnapped, but that he doesnt want the police involved in any way. The movie star and his wife both end up dead, and Masuto must investigate. Masuto is an inscrutable Asian detective. In case we don't catch on, the author reminds us by having everyone he meets ask him if he's Nisei. He reinforces the stereotype by repeatedly telling his boss that he knows who did the crime. Or rather, that he knows, but he doesn't exactly know, so he can't explain anything yet. Most of the suspects in are successful people and they resent Masuto's presence. Every time he asks even the most innocuous question he is accused of harrassing them and they threaten to sue the city. This gets old very, very fast. Further, none of the characters in the book behave like real people, or even Hollywood people. This is a very short novel, but tedious enough that it felt a lot longer.
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