Spoof

SPOOF is a satiric spoof on tabloids the world over, the truth and nothing but the truth. As we journalists say, "Trust me on this!" No matter what language they appear in, they are still yellow-journal rags at their best and worst. From the fast-paced murder hook opening to the action-packed thrilling climax amid the Camelot-ambiance of Palm Beach, Boca Raton, gated communities and environs, you are drawn into a world of the American Inquirer, centered in the coconut capital of the world, Palm Beach county, with its sunny beaches, green palms, and bright sunshine. This novel spoofs the whodunnit mystery genre like Westlake's TRUST ME ON THIS and Waugh's SCOOP. It is an inside tell-all tale of America's greatest fictional tabloid, and rips the lid off the real untold story of the bizarre clash between Hollywood-TV celebrities and chain-smoking tabloid editors. Both camps have a bitter Love-Hate relationship that goes back to the most infamous tabloid story ever written, the unsolved mystery of Jack The Ripper, who roamed the dark alleys of Whitechapel, London, in 1888. But it also is a touching love story of Will Buck, a nice-guy poet and tough-guy private eye who hunts down the "killer" of a lady close to his heart. There is enough mistaken identity subplots in this fast-action mind-numbling thriller for any whodunnit reader who loved the classic tea-cozies of Agatha Chistie's Miss Marple or the harboiled detective mysteries of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Will Buck, a humor-prone unlikely hero, in search of a brutal murderer, enters the inner sanctum of the Inquirer newsroom, and rips the cover off the truly savage beasts of today's computerized world of media mavens, exposing their Hour-of-the-Wolves mentality and frenzy-for-feeding on the spotlight lives of celebrities, movie stars and TV personalities, politicians and royalty. Nothing is sacred within the walls of a tabloid newsroom, nor the salacious pages of its printed stories. Get ready to rumble with the flash-bulb-brained paparazzi and the hard-nosed newshounds of the dirtiest rag ever printed, the American Inquirer.