The Prince of Beverly Hills

 

Stuart Woods wrote 52 novels, and Prince of Beverly Hills is the seventh review of his novels in this blog, so all three of our reviewers have written positively about his stories. His first book was published in 1991 and the last one was published in 2018, and he died in 2022. This was a delightful murder mystery about Rick Barron, a Beverly Hills cop who had just been demoted from a plum detective position to a beat cop because he had gotten a young woman pregnant, and she was a relative of the police chief. Rick had been a cop for eight years and he was tired of the work and bitter about the demotion. Then, an opportunity arose.

 

The story takes place in 1939, and it had the definite feel of an old time detective story which could have been written by Raymond Chandler. Late at night, near the end of his shift, Rick was sitting at a stoplight on Sunset Blvd when a fatal accident took place right in front of it. A woman ran a red light and was instantly killed, but the driver of the other car, Clete Barrow, was ejected and only bruised. Clete Barrow was a movie star, immediately recognized by Rick, who basically got him away from the accident scene and protected from the media finding out about it. The head of Barrow’s studio was grateful for Rick’s discretion and offered him the job of being the head of security for the studio. He was initially given the task of getting Barrow to the set on time for the day’s shooting of a new and important movie, despite Barrow’s horrible alcoholism. As he babysat Barrow, he quickly was seen time and again at all the Hollywood restaurants and a newspaper gossip columnist began calling him “The Prince of Beverly Hills.” Rick learned that he was hired to fill the job of a man who, along with his wife, were recently murdered, and that was the real plot of the book.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this light read and I’ll I’d be glad to read another Stuart Woods murder mystery.