Reel Stuff

By Don Bruns

USA Today best-selling author

Is it suicide or murder when Academy Award winning actor Jason Londell leaps to his death during the filming of a TV show in Miami? Londell's actress girlfriend hires private investigators James Lessor and Skip Moore to investigate. They uncover a plot loaded with twists and fueled by greed. The case sends James, Skip, and Skip's girlfriend, Emily, to Los Angeles where the blonde beauty goes undercover in Hollywood and is discovered by a talent agent. The normally level-headed Emily gets carried away by the dream of a career in pictures, but true to the cause of the case, she works with the guys to bring down the killer. Caught up in the world of movies, actors, actresses, and Hollywood, the trio finds that it really is the land of make believe—but murder is still the real thing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
• Release date: Dec 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781608090976

Don Bruns

Don Bruns is a singer and songwriter, a painter, a cook, a traveler, and stand-up-comic who has not decided what to do when he grows up. He is also the author of two mystery series. His “stuff series” showcases the unstoppable yet bumbling young private investigators, James Lessor and Skip Moore, and his “music series” features rock and roll writer Mick Sever. Don and his wife, Linda, live in South Florida.

Reviews for Reel Stuff

[david_ingram-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Don Bruns’s new entry in his Stuff series that covers the adventures of low-rent private eyes Skip Moore and James Lessor, has the pair working on a murder mystery that takes them from their usual Miami haunts to the La-la Land of Hollywood. While the film industry may be in the business of creating make-believe, beneath the fiction is a very real world of money, greed, and murder. Award-winning actor Jason Londell was doing a favor for a producer friend by making an appearance on the TV series Deadline Miami. The first part of the title comes true when Londell’s stunt jump from a scaffold goes horribly wrong. Skip and James are working security for the set, where Skip has a front-row seat for Londell’s death plunge. But was it an accident, or suicide, or was it murder? The female star of the show hires the pair to investigate. She’s most suspicious of Londell’s wife, who had also been his agent until recently. Complicating matters, the wife is pregnant, and also happens to be the star’s sister. Soon Skip and his long-term girlfriend Emily are off to Hollywood to pursue several leads. But events take a weird turn when Emily is “discovered” as an actress, and Skip is almost killed by a homicidal driver. There is no shortage of suspects: the agent/wife; the alcoholic director of the episode; and a cameraman who was on the scaffolding but disappeared immediately after Londell died. As Skip digs deeper, he uncovers more reasons why Londell had to die—and people are willing to kill Skip to keep the reasons secret. The portrayal of the film world, both on the Miami set and in Hollywood, is nicely done with fun tidbits for the reader. Bruns writes with a light touch and a keen eye for life’s ironies that puts a smile on your face even as you’re quickly turning the pages to see what happens next. Reviewed by David Ingram for Suspense Magazine