This note contains spoilers for the book.

Another almost non-series book, set before, during, and after WWII. Centurion Studios is new at this point, and our protagonist becomes its second security chief.

He rises through that to producer very quickly, leaving me wondering how they're going to replace somebody that good at being the security chief.

Mobsters are a problem, more personally than professionally (though they are blackmailing actresses, so that's partly professional). Eventually a couple of them are killed pretty deliberately, when other approaches aren't working, and nobody seems to shed any tears.

The security chief character is somewhat reminiscent of Jake in the Griffin marines books. Not by any means a direct copy, but they could have been based on knowing similar things about the studio system at that point in time, or something.