ARTHUR LYONS – Fast Fade. Jacob Asch #9. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1987; paperback, July 1988.

   PI Jacob Asch goes Hollywood in this one, his ninth overall. His client thinks a well-known director was once her husband, under another name, The director is also into kinky bondage, and when he’s found dead, they have a name for it: autoerotic asphyxiation.

   An underlying themes seems to be the built-in insecurities of show business, and the people in it. While the case itself is as heavily plotted as an X-rated Erle Stanley Gardner story, the wrapup comes a little too quick. I anticipated more than I got.

–Reprinted from from Mystery*File #14, July 1989.