The Actor's Guide To Greed (A Jarrod Jarvis Mystery 3)
Rick CoppScreen Actors Guide to Greed
Getting butchered at the hands of a serial killer in the "high concept" slasher film, Creeps, was supposed to revive former child star Jarrod Jarvis's career. Instead, it's a celluloid Titanic that makes Patty Duke's turn in Valley of the Dolls look like Swedish art house restraint. While nursing his wounds at the post-premiere party at a Starbucks on Beverly Boulevard, Jarrod runs into Wallace Goodwin, one of the former writers on Go to Your Room, the beloved eighties show that made Jarrod a star. He's shocked to discover that the neurotic, egotistical Wallace, whose biggest claim to fame was penning a very special episode of a Marla Gibbs sitcom and marrying leggy sexpot Katrina, has penned a play bound for London's West End, with a scene-stealing part for Jarrod. Like they say, when God closes a door, somewhere, he opens a window seat in coach.
Faster than you can say his catchphrase, "Baby, don't even go there!" Jarrod's hitting the boards in London… and the boards are hitting back, big time. As much as the actors all seem to loathe one another, they truly resent Jarrod. The hotshot young director with a thing for girls named Kate berates him at every turn. British legend Dame Sylvia Horner is so sloshed she can barely read her lines. Bollywood beefcake Akshay Kapoor's one facial expression seems to be handsome glowering - when he isn't making eyes at Jarrod's hunky LAPD boyfriend, Charlie. And since coming out has made him hot again, Sir Anthony Stiles wastes no time "tutoring" every young actor in a twelve-mile radius. Jarrod's only friend in the cast is the formidable Claire Richards. The sexy, forty-something, champagne-swilling, Oscar-winning actress is the undisputed star of the show - a lady who can chew scenery and her co-stars with equal abandon. No one can play a death scene like La Claire.
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