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Overview
Simeon Grist knows the City of Angels inside and out--the sex for sale, the chic seductions, the clientele of every bar from downtown L.A. to Venice. So when he's hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she's heavily invested in something far more lucrative than CDs--namely the Church of the Eternal Moment--a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium. Though he tails Sally all the Way to a seedy motel and a date with a murderer, he's too late to save her. And now he knows snooping has gotten him in way too deep, for he's become the next target of a very flesh-and-blood entity waiting in the twisted back alleys of sin and salvation to give him a brutal look at the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell--revelations he could definitely live without...Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Simeon Grist, former professor of English at UCLA and fledgling L.A. private eye, makes his debut in this clever mystery. To propel his plot, Hallinan adroitly depicts a new religion with avaricious leaders, New Age channeling and an overlay of California kookiness. Hired by the head of security of Monument Records to follow employee Sally Oldfield, suspected of selling information to competitors, Grist develops a liking for the woman. Then she is brutally murdered, and Grist is shocked to find that an impostor assigned him to the case. Investigating on his own, he follows leads to the Church of the Eternal Moment, with its child oracle Angel Ellspeth, her oh-so-smooth personal physician Dick Merryman and its crew of Listeners to whom the faithful confess all. As Grist searches for clues, aided by a former girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, now writing for the Los Angeles Times , he is threatened, beaten and involved in another murder. Televangelism, brainwashing, research into the early 19th-century diaspora of new American religions and a most unusual ally lead Grist to the denouement of this very satisfying mystery. ( June )Library Journal
Soon after the alleged head of security for a record company hires Simeon Grist to watch Sally Oldfield, a nasty man kills her and then the so-called security head. Grist's investigation (he liked Sally from afar) leads to predictably questionable goings-on at the Church of the Eternal Moment. Hallinan delivers these somewhat muffled connections in mostly flat, charmless prose, so that Hollywood settings and Grist's quirks do little to relieve the boredom. Not recommended.-- REKBook Details
Published
June 1, 1989
Publisher
New Amer Library Trade
Pages
1
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780453006507