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Deighton's incendiary novel of the film industry uncovers a Hollywood Babylon for our time.

Marshall Stone, international superstar and charismatic member of Hollywood's elite. Abundantly blessed with charm, genius and wealth, the one gift he most desires - everlasting youth - seems within his grasp when an eminent writer begins the star's biography. But painful memories and suppressed scandals threaten to expose the fiction of his life.

Dazzled by flattery and numbed by threats, the biographer is caught up in the big-daddy world where books are properties, films are investments, ratings are rigged, and stars and directors are bought and sold like slaves at an auction.

The rituals, the wheeler-dealing politics, and back-stabbing tactics of the richest industry in the world have never been more effectively portrayed. And at the heart of this glittering machine, a brilliant star who will do almost anything to remain untarnished.