Malicious Intent: A Hollywood Fable

"There is only one 'Guru of Gossip,' and that's Mike Walker. He's the dean of celebrity news and a first-rate TV personality."--Geraldo Rivera"I always assume Mike Walker has scooped anything I write. He surprises everybody by arriving without horns and a tail. He's amazingly rational, down-to-earth, intelligent, and 'with-it.'"--Liz Smith"Mike Walker is the Hemingway of gossip."--Howard SternMike Walker is an industry. And he's booming. He is, as Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker says, a "larger-than-life figure." For the last 35 years, Walker has been giving the public what it wants. As the famed gossip writer for the National Enquirer, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States, Walker dishes celebrity news in his column "Behind the Screens," reaching 17 million Americans each week. He's also a New York Times bestselling author, having penned his way to the top of the list with Nicole Brown Simpson: Private Diary of a Life Interrupted and Private Diary of an O.J. Juror. He's featured every Friday on "The Howard Stern Show" and is a regular guest on television shows like "Geraldo," "Nightline," and "Larry King Live," to name a few.Malicious Intent is Mike Walker's debut novel, a rip-snorting foray into the badlands of Hollywood celebrity, a story about big-time players following their "No Guts, No Glory!" regimen. Charmain Burns is a star with a capital S, a fire-breathing bombshell who doesn't take NO! for an answer and always goes to extremes to get her way. Her antics are what legends are made of. Her national notoriety as Miss Hula Girl lands Charmain a shot in Hollywood. Her big break comes when she's offered a chance to read for the mega-producer Larry Buckley, who needs a hot new face for his waning TV series BevHills High. Buckley decides that she is the ticket BevHills High needs. Charmain Burns is "The Girl You Love to Hate." Suddenly, the show is #1, and Charmain Burns is a household name, the bad girl of television. Yet only one thing will make her truly happy, and that's landing the lead in the sure-to-be-a-blockbuster film Medusa, a role every A-list star wants. The story is about an actress who would literally kill for a part--it's a role that Charmain knows all too well. With stardom comes media madness. And the media thrives off of stars like Charmain, who have a penchant for trouble. When the National Revealer prints unfavorable photos of Charmain, she relays a message to Steve Bellini, one of the newspapers celebrity-gossip editors, but her scare tactics quickly turn to murder, and Charmain's world begins to unravel. Always suspicious, Cameron Tull, the National Revealer's senior gossip columnist, is on the case, shooting for the story every writer dreams about. While Charmain furiously tries to erase her ties to the accident, Tull is furiously digging into her past. And he finds evidence that not only links Charmain to Bellini's murder, but uncovers her lethal history. The climax is a harrowing, out-of-control roller coaster ride, one that is sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Packed with rich characters, strong female personalities, real life stars such as Madonna, Joan Rivers, Sharon Stone, Hugh Grant and Johnnie Cochran, plus anecdotes only a gossip columnist like Mike Walker could know, Malicious Intent is the book all Hollywood will be gossiping about this fall. And when Hollywood gossips, the world listens.

From Publishers Weekly

For his first foray into fiction, National Enquirer writer Walker, author (with Faye Resnick) of Nicole Brown Simpson: Private Diary of a Life Interrupted, dreams up an over-the-top, tabloid-style thriller littered with real-life Hollywood references and thinly veiled fantasy sequences featuring recognizable characters. Hit actress Charmain Burns, the bad-girl star of TV show BevHills High, wants to punish tabloid reporter Steve Bellini after he publishes unflattering pictures of her beating a horse, but her method of retribution accidentally causes his death. The ensuing investigation drags in fashion designers, drug smugglers, a stalker called Randak 2000, who thinks he's from outer space, power brokers, CIA agents and another tabloid reporter, Cameron Tull, who eventually pieces together the life story Charmain is desperate to keep secret. The actress has good reason to fear exposure: since the day she murdered her abusive mother at age 12, she has been a magnet for crime and violence. As she works her way up from beauty queen to Hollywood star, even her one true love interest, wealthy French Creole charmer Patrick Taulere, comes to a gory end. Seducing men and women alike and armed at all times with a pistol and a straight razor, Charmain almost always gets what she wants, but as her various pursuers close in on her after Bellini's death, her lifeAand, almost as important, her Hollywood careerAhangs in the balance. She is about to be offered a lead role in a feature film, but dead bodies are piling up as fast as tabloid clippings, and a final macabre encounter with the otherworldly Randak 2000 seals her fate. The sleaze factor is high, the plot convoluted, but Walker knows his material (and his audience) as well as anyone. Literary Guild featured alternate. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Walker, a gossip columnist with the National Enquirer, presents Hollywood at its most vicious in this novel of ambition, greed, and revenge. Charmain Burns rises from Florida white trash to Hollywood stardom at an early age. Along the way, she leaves a trail of kinky sex and violence: castrations, murders, rapes. After Charmain sets in motion the accidental death of a reporter who has written an unflattering story about her, she is the object of constant surveillance by the reporter's editor and a maniac stalker. These actions come at the worst possible time, for Charmain is seeking the lead in Medusa, a film about an ambitious actress willing to kill for a prized movie role. Walker uses flashbacks to explain how Charmain got to Hollywood; and he is clearly profiling the new breed of female star--tough and business minded, prone to outrageous behavior, outspoken, and independent. But he also provides a scathing portrait of greedy, malicious reporters, directors, and agents in this intense novel about Hollywood. Vanessa Bush

From Kirkus Reviews

Walker (Nicole Brown Simpson, not reviewed), gossip columnist for the National Enquirer, knows that a big dish of a tabloid, vice-ridden novelthe bloodier the betterwon't kill you. On the seventh floor of a Beverly Hills Hotel, producer Noel Gold hurls fabulous thunderbolts of persuasion at Meryl Olivier, the world's greatest actress, to get her to sign onto his new high-voltage flick, Die Faster 5, with Ronnie Foster, the new Bruce Willis smirk-alike. What he doesn't know is that Steve Bellini, editor of the National Revealer, who has a room nine floors above Gold's, has dangled an electronic spy outside Gold's balcony and is hearing every word. Then Bellini's body suddenly lands on Gold's balcony, along with all the breakfast silver and plateware on his serving cart. Has Bellini been murdered because he was pursuing the ultrahush story of top Italian star Case Burton's having AIDS and, in revenge against women, stepping up his sex life and riding all his conquests bareback? Or is the real story about bad girl Charmain Burns, the novel's slightly psychotic romantic interest, who will do anything to play Medusa, the young actress who can turn male hearts to stone, in the smash TV show BevHills High? National Revealer's Cameron Tull, America's best-known gossip columnist, wants to know all about Charmain, whos threatened to launch a $300-million suit against Bellini and who we meet when she walks naked into a roomful of friends and lies down on a table, ready to undergo The Ritual. When Charmain finds herself trailed by Randak 2000, the stalker from planet Kaldan, her hired guard can't save her. And what about Tull's full-tilt obsession with the viscerally beautiful, raven-haired Charmain? Is he really only out to solve Bellini's murder? Outrageously, the last third is presented in draft outline, like a treatment being pitched to a studio, a move that takes guts but gives the novel full tabloidal snap. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher

Reviews - "It's okay to admit you've got an enquiring mind, chums. Gossip, after all, is just another word for news in a slinky red dress. And when people say, as they often do, that gossip is for ignoble minds, tell them this: "Gossip is the oldest indoor sport after sex." WALKER IN THE SUN-SENTINEL "Mike Walker is the Hemingway of gossip." HOWARD STERN "I always assume Mike Walker has probably scooped anything I write. He surprises everybody by arriving without horns and a tail. He's amazingly rational, down-to-earth, intelligent, and 'with-it.'" LIZ SMITH "Walker is...regularly described as a journalistic legend." THE INDEPENDENT(LONDON), JANE ROBINS "There is only one 'Guru of Gossip,' and that's Mike Walker. He's the Dean of celebrity news and a first-rate TV personality." GERALDO RIVERA "We define what tabloid is. We're the granddaddy of all tabloids." WALKER IN THE NEW YORK POST "The last remaining larger-than-life figure in American tabloid journalism." JEFFREY TOOBIN, THE NEW YORKER "Mike Walker - the National Enquirer Legend." LOS ANGELES TIMES

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