Like a Hole in the Head Author:Jen Banbury Jill, a part-time bookseller and full-time wise ass, buys a first edition Jack London from a slippery-looking dwarf. The dwarf returns soon after with a polite assassin who wants the book back. Unfortunately, Jill has already unloaded it for a nice profit, to a former child actor turned book dealer turned love interest. She isn't about to drop t... more »he dime on him, so the upshot is, Jill has to find it, or else.
What at first seems like a lucky break turns into unexpected adventure when a cast of B-movie thugs, sleazy book dealers, and ambitious Hollywood moguls join the hunt for the book. Jill finds herself leading an antic chase, via motorcycyle, station wagon, and highjacked bottled-water delivery truck, across Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the Hollywood Hills. Before she can retrieve the book and discover its irresistible secret, Jill will be cheated, lied to, drugged, tortured, and even forced to act as a movie extra against her will.
Nothing is as it first appears in this novel - the heroine isn't as tough as she wants to be, the good guys have secrets, the bad guys are sometimes only out-of-work actors picking up extra money. As the bizarre reality of Jill's situation comes to light, she knows life will never again be quite the same. As Charles, the bottled-water delivery guys says, "You wake up a normal human being trying to get by. And then lady fate. Aah, lady fate."« less