Our book today is Stan Cutler’s 1994 mystery novel Shot on Location, a snapping-good Hollywood whodunit starring the unlikely duo of fifty-something “fixer” tough guy Rayford Goodman and twenty-something gay writer Mark Bradley – a duo who might never have met each other except that Mark Bradley’s seedy publisher, Pendragon Press, has secured the rights to Ray Goodman’s memoir of his decades as an investigator-to-the-stars. The job of creating this book falls to Goodman and Bradley in allegedly equal parts, and since Cutler gives us chapters alternately narrated by each, we get both versions of that creative endeavor. As Goodman puts it:

“As Told to Mark Bradley” – which means I told him the story and he put down the words. Only listen to him, you’d think he actually wrote it. Writers have some ego.

Or, in Bradley’s version:

Now, however, Pendragon [Press, "in whose vineyard I so vigorously labored (wherein I planteth and careth not the fruit therefrom"] had achieved respectability – or at least solvency – due in no small part to my own contribution as first semi-ghost writer (“as told to”) to the near-famous, and more recently as co-biographer, due to an incredible prank of fate, with Rayford Goodman of his own “auto”-biography … Goodman and I painfully and with irreconcilable differences collaborated on the writing (theoretically – I did the actual writing) and the solving of incidental murders involved in the telling (in large measure, admittedly, the efforts of Goodman).

Mark Bradley is a winningly sympathetic character – and convincingly human, considering the state of gay characters in mainstream fiction twenty years ago (Cutler, a handsome and eloquent veteran TV hack, was nominated for a couple of Lambda Awards specifically for how refreshingly three-dimensional Mark Bradley is – and how grudgingly OK Ray Goodman is with him). But for me, the real engine propelling these novels (not only Shot on Location, but the three other Goodman-Bradley mysteries, Best Performance by a Patsy, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, and Rough Cut) is Rayford Goodman himself, who’s “the wrong side of fifty, heavier side of two hundred, and shorter side of six feet. Plus the poorer side of divorce, unhealthier side of a heart attack, and not leading the pack in the virility sweeps” (although that last bit takes at turn for the better when Ray becomes romantically involved with the spirited Francine, one of Mark Bradley’s co-workers).

In Shot on Location, Stacy Jaeger, the country’s most famous actor, suddenly finds himself at the heart of a violent tragedy: his son has shot and killed his sister’s sketchy lover, and the question of Jaeger’s involvement starts a media feeding frenzy – which is good news for Mark Bradley, since he’s been commissioned to write a standard ‘unauthorized biography’ of Jaeger, but bad news for Goodman, whose jury duty on a headline-grabbing murder case drags him into the Jaeger business. In short order, our odd couple are back together again – and as much work as Cutler puts into all his characters, it’s Goodman who really shines in these beautifully-constructed, fast-paced books, Goodman telling us his own story in his man’s-man terms:

I come from a generation takes care of business. I get a ticket, I pay it; no getting stopped for a broken taillight and busted for outstanding warrants. I don’t lose my keys. Forget my wallet. I don’t need a bank card to get money nights or weekends. I’m almost always reliable because it’s logical and makes life easier.

The Goodman-Bradley mysteries suddenly stopped in the mid-90s. We have only these four adventures – but they’re very much worth tracking down, especially if you like your thinly-disguised entertainment-world gossip served up hot and funny.