Hollywood, Baltimore mingle in mystery

Baltimore is one of the secret centers of the universe. Seriously. No matter who you are or where you live, I guarantee you are but one degree, two at the most, removed from someone who was born, reared or did serious time there. I know this because I was born in Baltimore (see, and now you know me) and I cannot tell you how many times a working knowledge of Fells Point, the Inner Harbor and the brutal history of the Baltimore Colts has come in handy in terms of conversational ice-breaking -- even when finding oneself among movie stars.

Laura Lippman understands this. As the author of more than a dozen mysteries set in Baltimore, she knows how to work her town, nailing just enough details to give her tales veracity without turning them into missives from the Chamber of Commerce. In her latest, “Another Thing to Fall,” she had me at Hochschild Kohn. The uber-department store of every baby boomer Baltimorean’s childhood, the chain is now defunct, but Lippman turns one of the empty stores into a soundstage. Just seeing the name was enough, and by the time she mentioned Hydrox (for a time, an East Coast, and superior, version of Oreos), I was a goner.

Which is ironic since the reason I was reading “Another Thing to Fall” was the Hollywood connection. In this, the 10th installment of the Tess Monaghan series, the action revolves around a television show that is being shot -- or attempting to be shot, given all the mysterious fires and other mishaps that keep occurring -- in Sparrows Point, a neighborhood of the private investigator’s beloved Baltimore area.

When Tinsel Town meets Charm City, no one is better suited to play hostess than Lippman. Here it must be noted that Lippman, like her sleuth, is a former Baltimore newspaper reporter, but unlike Tess, she is married to David Simon, the creator and executive producer of the fabulous, and just recently concluded, television series “The Wire.” It must quickly be added that the show being filmed in “Another Thing to Fall” is a costume drama with time travel and a female lead; in other words, it could not be further from the gritty, mostly male, mean streets of the HBO series. Still, Lippman clearly knows how a television show works, which lends her tale a measure of color and integrity, not to mention good old insider juiciness.

Our gal Tess gets hauled onto the set of “Mann of Steel,” pretty much literally, when, out for a morning scull ride on the Patapsco River, she accidentally launches herself into a shot. Producer Flip Tumulty, son of a legendary Baltimore filmmaker, hires her on the spot; not to investigate the series of fires and vandalism -- it could just be the out-of-work steelworkers don’t appreciate a period piece that celebrates the glory days but whose producers aren’t giving back to the community -- but to baby-sit the show’s high-strung young star, Selene Waites. Apparently a local man had killed himself after the show began filming and items from the set, including many photographs of Selene, had been found in his apartment. Selene, Flip believes, is vulnerable.

Vulnerable all right, but mostly to problems of her own making. No-nonsense Tess takes the job for the money and a chance to give her nephew a shot working on a TV show, but she’s soon losing patience with the ditsy narcissism of her young charge, the arrogance of show writer Ben Marcus, the overbearing nature of petite unit production manager Lottie MacKenzie and the insular self-absorbed insanity of a television production in general. Egos collide in every way imaginable -- Flip is trying to sneak out of his famous father’s shadow, Ben is sleeping with Selene but keeping it from Flip, Selene’s costar Johnny Tampa is trying to resurrect his career while Flip’s assistant, Greer, is doing everything she can to jump-start hers. Meanwhile, at least one shadowy figure is keeping a watch on things, for reasons of his or her own.

Still, when one of the crew members is found beaten to death, Tess begins nosing, and she senses that not all of the acting is taking place in front of the camera.

As is often the case in mysteries with a big cast of characters, the detection of the crime is not as interesting as the interaction among the players. Lippman gives us Hollywood types who are also identifiable as people -- no small feat -- and captures both the life-in-a-bubble feel of a location set and the controlled hysteria that so often is the creative process. If the stakes of the actual mystery don’t seem terribly high until the very, and a bit out of nowhere, end, the portrait of down-to-earth Tess trying to keep track of the three-ring circus that is “Mann of Steel” provides enough tension and action to keep things moving.

It’s difficult to write about Hollywood without lapsing into satire or caricature, but with Baltimore as her anchor and her beacon, Lippman has her fun and keeps it real at the same time.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com