New York, NY: Delacorte (1999)

First Edition. Signed.

Near fine in dust jacket.

Chili Palmer's follow-up to his smash hit film Get Leo bombed, and in Hollywood, you're considered only as hot as your last project.

Once again outside the system, Chili is exploring an idea for his third film by lunching with a former "associate" from his Brooklyn days who's now a record label executive. When lunch begins with iced tea and ends in a mob hit, Chili soon finds himself in an unlikely alliance with one of the LAPD's finest. Detective Darryl Holmes, and the very likely next target of Russian gangsters.

With a hit man on his trail, Chili tries to pull together his next movie, the story of Linda Moon, a real-life singer with dreams that go further than her current gig. She's desperate to tear loose from her current manager, an erstwhile pimp named Raji. Orchestrating his movie as he goes along, Chili wrests the reins of Linda's singing career away from Raji, basing the plot of his new film on the action that unfolds as a result.