Helpful Score: 3
Bradbury is always a joy, so it should be no surprise that this comic take on murder is a delight.
From Library Journal
This atmospheric noir novel from sf great Bradbury has a protagonist who could be a stand-in for the writer, a fast-talking damsel in distress, and a host of other odd characters who live in a decrepit Hollywood full of ghosts from the 1920s and 1930s. The screenwriter hero's proverbial dark and stormy night in 1960 is interrupted by Constance Rattigan, a has-been film star who is terrified that someone is out to kill her and those connected with her past, who confides in him and then disappears. The screenwriter and his detective pals fear for Constance's physical and mental safety as, one by one, her trail leads to dead bodies. Though professing to be a mystery, this book is more about mood than plot, raising larger questions of identity while providing loving descriptions of crepuscular Hollywood landmarks and citizens. The staccato writing style even reflects screen dialog, and Bradbury draws on his adolescence in California to add authenticity. Recommended for all public libraries and those in love with long-ago Hollywood and its lost souls.
--Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI
This atmospheric noir novel from sf great Bradbury has a protagonist who could be a stand-in for the writer, a fast-talking damsel in distress, and a host of other odd characters who live in a decrepit Hollywood full of ghosts from the 1920s and 1930s. The screenwriter hero's proverbial dark and stormy night in 1960 is interrupted by Constance Rattigan, a has-been film star who is terrified that someone is out to kill her and those connected with her past, who confides in him and then disappears. The screenwriter and his detective pals fear for Constance's physical and mental safety as, one by one, her trail leads to dead bodies. Though professing to be a mystery, this book is more about mood than plot, raising larger questions of identity while providing loving descriptions of crepuscular Hollywood landmarks and citizens. The staccato writing style even reflects screen dialog, and Bradbury draws on his adolescence in California to add authenticity. Recommended for all public libraries and those in love with long-ago Hollywood and its lost souls.
--Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI
If you like Ray Bradbury, this is, acording to the Pittsburh Post Gazette - "A ghostlhy tale of murder and old Hollywood - written in Bradbury's breathless and unbeatable prose... not your usual mystery."
The story summation is as follows: "On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writed in Venice , CA answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once glamourous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge and vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre books: twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead with Constance's name included among them. And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken down jalopy with his sidekick Crumley to sift through the ashes of a bygone Hollywood, a graveyard of ghosts and secrets where each twisted road leads to grim shrines and shattered dreams, and, all too often, to death."
The story summation is as follows: "On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writed in Venice , CA answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once glamourous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge and vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre books: twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead with Constance's name included among them. And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken down jalopy with his sidekick Crumley to sift through the ashes of a bygone Hollywood, a graveyard of ghosts and secrets where each twisted road leads to grim shrines and shattered dreams, and, all too often, to death."
