Dirt

On the heels of his New York Times bestseller Choke, Stuart Woods brings back one of his best-loved characters, Stone Barrington, in a glittering roller-coaster ride through the murderous world of high-profile celebrity gossip.

Feared and disliked for both her poison pen and ice-queen persona, gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. When an anonymous gossipmonger begins faxing the scathing details of Amanda's sexual indiscretions to national opinion makers, she turns to Stone Barrington for help. But as the faxes also expose other members of the gossip "community," it becomes apparent that the most respected of the social scene will stop at nothing--even murder--to clear their names. Set against a backdrop of glitzy Manhattan society, Dirt is a sexy, fast-paced and witty thriller--Stuart Woods at his best.

Woods seems to write smooth and solid thrillers as fast as most of us read them. Cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington of New York Dead returns with all his street smarts intact in this story about a powerful gossipmonger who has the tables turned when dirty pictures of her start appearing on fax machines across the country. The characters are so rich, famous, and upscale that you might get a nosebleed, but Woods has a light, deft touch that makes the book hard to resist.