Death takes the stage

KIRKUS REVIEWDumb Arnie, the giant-sized tracker, loves savvy Bobbie, the adorable actor; so when the police shrug off Bobbie's death as a routine, kinky, gay fatality (an overdose, with billions of cigarette burns all over his body), Arnie seeks out Bobbie's agent, Jake Weissman, for help. The problem, says Weissman, is that he can't recall Arnie's young man, and, besides, detective work is out of his line. Egged on, however, by his hot-as-a-tamale, illegal-alien secretary, Miss Murphy, Jake is soon up to his gold neck-chains investigating the cast of characters at the Quest Theatre, where Bobbie sometimes worked the box office. Among the suspects: stuntman turned theater-owner Hank Harvey, who quickly exits the scene by overbalancing on a ladder (was he pushed?); Hazel, the badly bewigged ex-wife, often in a heroin-induced haze; feminist dramatist Yolanda, whose revolutionary children's play will be Quest's next production; her yes-man, accompanist Kitty; actor Carl, soon dispatched with broken bones (an accident?); and the looney ""twins,"" Tina and Tim, who deliver vicious little barbs with Noel Coward's panache. Meanwhile, macho Jake and simple Arnie are truly, sweetly becoming real friends, and, at the agent's suggestion, Arnie agrees to sub for the ailing Carl. Only he's a no-show; Jake goes on; real guns shoot real bullets, not blanks; and before you can shout, ""Curtains!,"" Arnie is reading a letter Bobble left behind that tells all, Jake is being hauled to a prop room, and is well on his way to becoming a cigarette-burned corpse. Arnie to the rescue, of course. Despite the cruelty and bizarreness at the end, a very likable story--and a frisky debut for first-time author Ward.