Death of a showgirl - Tobias Jones

A beautiful teenage girl, Simona Biondi, has gone missing from her home
in the Italian capital. Castagnetti, the private detective hired by her
parents, trawls the streets of Rome, finding himself drawn into the
dark, erotic world of a TV empire belonging to a media mogul turned
politician called Mario Di Angelo.

He unearths a murky world in which
nubile young women, desperate for stardom, are prepared to do anything
to get a break; in which powerful men are happy to exploit that
desperation in order to make money and make love.
Castagnetti
discovers that Anna Sartori, a young woman on the fringes of the Di
Angelo empire, went missing almost twenty years ago. Anna Sartori's best
friend, he finds out, was Simona's sister.

This is a world, Castagnetti realises, where secrets are like fireworks: you don't see them until they explode.