William Goldman was apparently good at two things, writing and holding grudges. With this book he gets to show off some of the writing skill while alsWilliam Goldman was apparently good at two things, writing and holding grudges. With this book he gets to show off some of the writing skill while also burning a whole lot of bridges by dishing out a lot of Hollywood gossip that make a lot of very famous people sound not so great. Along the way he also imparts some of the wisdom he picked up about movie making which really boils down to, “Nobody knows anything.”
It's a fun book although it seems more than a little self-aggrandizing at times and like Goldman really enjoyed settling some scores. Since it was written in the early ‘80s there’s also a fun time-capsule quality to it, and while Goldman wasn’t 100% accurate when it came to predicting where the film industry would end up going, he was also right about a whole lot of things. ...more
I can’t believe I drank 8 whiskey sours while reading this book!
It’s 1969 and former TV star Rick Dalton’s career is on a downhill slide while his neI can’t believe I drank 8 whiskey sours while reading this book!
It’s 1969 and former TV star Rick Dalton’s career is on a downhill slide while his next door neighbors, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, are the new cool kids of Hollywood. Meanwhile, Rick’s stuntman/driver Cliff Booth has a run in with some freaky hippies who keep talking about their leader, Charlie.
This one is a real oddity. You’ve got the writer/director of a successful movie releasing a novel based on it, but the book doesn’t exactly follow the film. In fact, the climax of the movie is casually revealed about one-third of the way through the book as something that eventually happens without going into details or mentioning it again.
I’ve often thought that Quentin Tarantino’s films are kind of Rorschach tests in that people can and will read into them what they want. While he certainly deserves criticism for several things, and I often find his personality tiresome, his movies fascinate me. Particularly this one which I thought was one of his best and had really interesting themes about a time when Hollywood was both changing and remaining the same. I also thought it had a lot of intriguing things regarding movie violence vs. violence in reality. Since I had a lot of theories about what QT was actually saying about it, I enjoyed finding more details in the book that seemed to confirm that. Especially about Cliff Booth.
If you’re into the movie, it’s worth a look, but you’re also not really missing out on anything if you just want to stick to the film version. If you don’t like QT or the film, it’s not gonna change your mind. Overall, it’s kind of like a literary version of deleted scenes. They can be interesting, but were most likely cut for a reason....more
First comes the review, and then if you keep reading you’ll get the funny story of how I crossed paths with the author of this one. How’s that for a tFirst comes the review, and then if you keep reading you’ll get the funny story of how I crossed paths with the author of this one. How’s that for a teaser?
Dayna Anderson had 15 minutes of fame thanks to starring in a string of TV commercials for a fast-food chicken place. However, after losing that gig she’s now struggling to get by, and she’s desperate to make some quick cash to prevent the bank from foreclosing on her parents’ house. Inspiration comes after Dayna sees a billboard offering a large cash reward for tips on the hit-and-run death of a young woman, and Dayna realizes that she and some friends had almost been struck by a reckless car that was most likely the same one that killed the girl.
At first Dayna is just hoping that finding out the details of the crime will help jog her memory so that she can give the cops a clue and claim the reward, but soon she finds herself drawn into the mystery. Once Dayna sets out to find the killer not even the quickly dwindling minutes on her phone plan can stop her investigation.
Amateur sleuths usually aren’t my favorite sub-genre of mysteries, but I had a really good time with this one. Kellye Garrett has a great sense of comedic timing in her writing, and there was many a laugh-out-loud moment. (I listened to the audio version, and narrator Bahni Turpin helped the jokes land as well.) The celebrity obsessed culture of Hollywood is used to great effect with Dayna’s humorous observations about it. It’s also a nice touch that Dayna isn’t just pointing and mocking. She is part of that world so while she may poke gentle fun at her best friend’s relentless seeking of fame, it’s done with affection.
I also enjoyed Dayna because after reading about a ton of super-macho tough guy detectives it was refreshing to have someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing as a lead character. Not that Dayna comes across as stupid, just inexperienced, and enthusiasm often gets the better of her common sense. That helps add to the comedic elements, but her pure determination and a wealth of knowledge from watching true crime shows keep Dayna hot on the trail of the killer even as she’s clueless about her own love life. She’s a classic underdog that you can’t help but root for.
Overall, it’s a funny and entertaining mystery with a great lead character that has some very witty observations about Hollywood.
And now for the bonus story…
I was at Bouchercon in Dallas last fall, and in addition to seeing some of my favorite writers I watched several interesting people I had never read before on panels so I made a point out of buying a copy of their books and trying to meet them at some point. That’s already paid off with in my recent reading of books by authors like Eryk Pruitt, Jennifer Hillier, and SA (Shawn) Cosby.
Unfortunately, none of those authors was Kellye Garrett.
In fact, I had never heard of her or seen her on any panels. So I probably sounded completely rude and ignorant when I happened to meet her in the hotel bar one night and asked her what kind of stuff she wrote. The extra embarrassing thing for me is that although I didn’t know it at the time she had just come from the Anthony Awards where she had been nominated for Best Novel. She politely told me about this series and game me a promotional card for one of the books.
Afterwards, I started following several of the other authors on Twitter, and Kellye’s name kept coming up. That’s where I saw that her books were about to be released on Audible so I had this on deck when I read My Darkest Prayer. I noted in in my review that that Shawn Cosby had been a huge presence at Bouchercon.
And who should just so happen to comment on that review? That’s right. Kellye Garrett. She was shocked to hear that we had met at that Bouchercon. (I was relived that she didn’t say, “Oh, you were THAT asshole?!?) Then it was my turn to be shocked when she complimented me on some of the reviews I’d done on the Spenser series she’d read before.
After all that I felt like I was destined to read this book, and I'm glad I did....more
If you ever thought that writers like James Ellroy exaggerate the corruption of old Hollywood, try reading this.
The murder of influential film directoIf you ever thought that writers like James Ellroy exaggerate the corruption of old Hollywood, try reading this.
The murder of influential film director William Desmond Taylor has so many viable suspects and motives that it could be the plot for a sequel to Knives Out. For starters, despite being a well-respected figure in the movie industry Taylor was a man who had secrets like a wife and daughter that he had abandoned years before coming to Hollywood and changing his name. He may have also been gay or bisexual, and there were rumors that he had frequented opium dens.
Taylor had already been burned by one man who found out who he really was. His former butler had learned about his former life before stealing from Taylor and vanishing. He was a prime suspect in the murder, but the press latched on to theories that said that Taylor had been killed by a woman as a result of some kind of romantic entanglement. Mary Miles Minter was a young starlet infatuated with Taylor which made her domineering mother furious even as Taylor didn’t return her affections. Another actress, Mabel Norman, was trying to put her life and career back together with Taylor’s help after breaking a drug addiction, and there was wild speculation that Mabel or one of her former dealers angry at Taylor’s efforts to keep her clean might have done it. Another small-time actress named Margaret ‘Gibby’ Gibson wasn’t implicated at the time, but her deathbed confession to killing Taylor decades later would lead many to believe that it was a blackmail attempt by Gibson and some friends of hers that led to murder.
This book leans into the idea that the crime might have been solved back in 1922 if it wasn’t the studio using its influence to steer the police and the press in certain directions. Powerful executive Adolph Zukor already had his hands full holding off reformers and government regulations in the face of scandal, and his minions took all of Taylor’s papers from his house before the police could read them. Later, the papers they gave to investigators may have been cherry picked to lead the police towards Minter and Norman since letting one or two actresses get pummeled in the press and by ‘moralists’ across the country was preferable to having all of Hollywood’s dirty laundry come out at that critical time.
Overall, this is an interesting look at an unsolved mystery. and Mann seems to do a credible job of sticking to the known facts. The backdrop of Zukor trying to hold onto power as he battled reformers is interesting in itself. I particularly found the story of Will Hays fascinating. It’s weird how things evolved so that he’d eventually have to found the infamous Hays Code which would stifle movies for decades even as he was not a moralizing reformer himself, and he was deeply uncomfortable with the idea that he should be a censor or in charge of doing things like banning Arbuckle from making movies.
Unfortunately, Mann falls into the true-crime trap of falling in love with a theory and presenting it as the only possible solution when that’s not the case. Here, he spends a lot of time following Margaret Gibson and her blackmail accomplices to establish how he thinks they were involved later and how their activities indicate a pattern that might have been used on Taylor. And that’s certainly possible, but there’s no new evidence to prove that. Yet, Mann presents this as the obvious solution while blowing by the parts that don’t fit or point to other people. His ideas about how a conspiracy within the studio to steer the cops wrong and throwing their own people like Minter and Norman under the bus while protecting someone like Gibson seems especially shaky.
So if you’re interested it’s good for understanding the basic facts and context of what happened, but wary of the places where Mann speculates without considering alternatives....more
We’ve all heard of the Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine, but when you read a James Ellroy novel it’s more like Bad-Cop/Worse-Cop/Crimes-Against-Humanity-Cop.
TWe’ve all heard of the Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine, but when you read a James Ellroy novel it’s more like Bad-Cop/Worse-Cop/Crimes-Against-Humanity-Cop.
This third installment in the L.A. Quartet introduces us to another trio of police officers who wouldn't last ten minutes on the job if there were smart phones in the 1950s which could have recorded their many misdeeds. Ed Exley is a brilliant detective, but his physical cowardice is exceeded only by his ruthless ambition. Bud White is a thug who never met a suspect he couldn’t beat into talking, and he’s got a special hatred reserved for men who hurt women. Jack Vincennes has gone Hollywood with a side gig as the technical advisor for a TV cop show, and his reputation as a relentless narco officer is mainly due to him taking payoffs from a scandal rag to arrest movie stars to create juicy stories.
The three cops end up involved in a police brutality scandal dubbed Bloody Christmas which leads to drastic changes of fortune for each of them. Then a shocking mass murder in a coffee shop in an apparent robbery gone wrong draws all of them into the orbit of the investigation. Driven by their obsessions and haunted by secrets all of them will follow separate trails through a tangled web of pornography, drugs, prostitution, rape, and murder.
Ellroy had used similar elements of historical fiction that combines the seedy history of L.A. with his own epic crime stories in previous books, but I think this is where he perfected the idea and really soared with it. It’s the first time he fully deployed a unique style that is essentially a stream of consciousness that shifts among the three leads that uses clipped sentences to form a patter that makes everything feel more as if it’s being experienced instead of a narrative you’re reading.
The main appeal for me is the three main characters. These are not nice guys. They are utterly amoral and unrepentant racists who cause an enormous amount of damage in pursuit of their own agendas. What saves them (And this is what usually redeems Ellroy’s characters.) is their ultimate realizations that they’re pawns being used by a system that is far more criminal and corrupt than anything they’ve done, and that they’re willing to destroy themselves and everything around them in bids for redemption.
This is a brutal, vicious crime novel filled with shocking acts of violence and offensive language. It’s also an extremely complex and dense book with multiple confusing sub-plots spinning off the main Nite Owl story. I’ve read it multiple times, and I’d still be hard pressed to explain everything that happens and why. Despite all of that it remains among my favorite novels because it is such a bold attempt to do something different that is mostly successful.
I also credit the movie as being one of the best adaptations of a book I’ve seen. There’s only about 40% of the plot from the page on the screen, but they did a masterful job of combining and condensing elements while preserving the essential feel of the book and smartly keeping the focus on its three flawed main characters....more
Ah, the post-war years. America’s golden age when things were so much better than they are today. When no injustice ever occurred, and no one was unfaAh, the post-war years. America’s golden age when things were so much better than they are today. When no injustice ever occurred, and no one was unfairly treated. Every pay check was a fortune, every meal a banquet, and the worst crime was the odd rapscallion stealing a pie off a window sill. Or maybe sometimes the bisected body of a woman who had been brutally tortured would be left in an empty lot which would put a wildly corrupt police force in a frenzied media spotlight as the cops fruitlessly tried to solve the murder.
It really was a simpler time…
This was the book where James Ellroy stepped his game up from promising mystery writer to a creator of epic historical fiction by mixing a famous unsolved murder with seedy LA history via flawed fictional characters. Our narrator is Dwight ‘Bucky’ Bleichart, a former boxer turned LAPD officer just after World War II. Bucky agrees to fight another cop named Lee Blanchard as part of a departmental publicity stunt. The boxing match makes them partners, but it’s Lee’s girlfriend Kay who unites all three of them into a family. It’s a dead woman that eventually starts to tear them all to pieces.
In reality Elizabeth Short was just another young woman who came to LA with stars in her eyes, but her unsolved murder became one of those crimes that stuck in the public consciousness. Ellroy has talked and written a great deal about how he poured a lot of his unresolved feelings about his mother’s unsolved murder into the Dahlia case, and if there’s one thing you’re sure of by the time you’re done reading it’s that he knows what it’s like to be obsessed and haunted by dead women.
Ellroy is also fascinated by the shady history of LA and its police department, and he uses that knowledge to craft a fantastically violent and corrupt world where the cops are often worse than the criminals they’re arresting. Almost everyone involved the investigation has their own agendas, and the methods used to get what they want are brutal. Nobody gets out clean when it comes to the Dahlia, least of all those who give the most while trying to learn who killed her.
This is a great crime story with a hard boiled edge that was one of the books that made me a huge fan of James Ellroy....more
Megan Abbott’s first novel is a nifty little noir set in post-war LA. School teacher Lora King is extremely close to her brother Bill who is a police Megan Abbott’s first novel is a nifty little noir set in post-war LA. School teacher Lora King is extremely close to her brother Bill who is a police detective. When Bill meets Alice Steele he falls head over heels for her, and the two are soon married. Alice shows a tireless energy and enthusiasm for life as a homemaker that would make Martha Stewart feel like a lazy slob, but Lora finds herself becoming suspicious of her new sister-in-law after getting clues indicating that she had a shady past before meeting Bill.
It’s a great turn to have a cop in a mystery novel set during this time frame since it's a genre and era dominated by men but mainly used as a supporting character that two woman revolve around. It’s also interesting how Lora finds herself becoming intrigued with what she learns about Alice’s seedy history and starts indulging in her own wild side. The writing shows the Mighty Megan knack for getting inside the head of a conflicted person as well as making both the suburbs and seedy nightclubs come alive with a variety of characters. This is a solid start to a great writer’s career, and I particularly liked the ending.
I’m calling it 3.5 stars just because I think she did it even better in her later books....more
Either I’m a lot dumber than I thought, or this book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. Or maybe both. Ambiguity! It’s a bitch.
Scott McGrath used to Either I’m a lot dumber than I thought, or this book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. Or maybe both. Ambiguity! It’s a bitch.
Scott McGrath used to be a hotshot investigative journalist until he started looking into mysterious and reclusive film director Stanilas Cordova who has been holed up in his remote estate making underground masterpieces of suspense that seem to ruin the lives of almost everyone involved with them. (Think M. Night Shyamalan before we all realized that he actually sucks.)
McGrath trashed his career by making accusations against Cordova based on a single source he didn’t verify. When Cordova’s talented daughter Ashley commits suicide by leaping down an elevator shaft in an abandoned building McGrath decides that he can vindicate himself by looking into her death as a way into once again digging into Cordova’s life. Circumstances force McGrath into a reluctant partnership with a shady young man with a personal connection to Ashley and a young actress wannabe who met the doomed woman shortly before she died.
That’s when things start getting weird. Is Cordova a brilliant but eccentric filmmaker, or is he an evil puppet master willing and capable of destroying people’s lives via unknown forces? Was Ashley just a confused young woman who met an untimely end, or was she stalked by supernatural evil brought about somehow by her father? McGrath’s investigation dumps him into a maze that leaves him questioning reality itself.
As a kid growing up in the ‘70s there were some horror movies that took on an almost legendary quality back in those pre-Internet days. You’d hear adults talking about something called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and someone with wide eyes would confidently assert in a whisper that it was based on a true story. Or some kid at school would tell you that that his brother had told him that the devil was actually in The Exorcist. There’s a story in my family about how my aunt was so terrified after seeing The Shining that she demanded that my uncle take her to another movie immediately afterwards because she was positive that she wouldn’t be able to sleep for days if she didn’t do something to try and get it out of her head that very second.
That’s the power that horror movies used to have, and I think a lot of that has been lost in these days of DVD directors' commentaries and IMDB trivia pages. What I liked a lot about Night Film is that it seemed to recapture some of that old spirit. One of the creepiest aspects was that idea that a movie can be dangerous because some filmmakers are so deranged and/or tapped into something strange that could literally cause psychological damage to a viewer. Cordova as this mysterious figure whose films inspire underground viewings and a cult following was suitably spooky and unsettling. There’s an underlying theme of hidden worlds that can be accessed or expressed via film that I would have liked more of.
I think where I ran into problems personally is that the book tries to have it both ways. It’s functioning on some levels as a pretty standard thriller, and if you judge it like that, I found things like the characters actions and plot machinations kind of cliched. However, if you look at it as more of a David Lynch kind of experience, something where the normal rules get checked at the door, then it feels more ambitious and even a little dangerous.
Yet, it doesn’t seem to want to just dive in and go bananas either. It was almost like the grounding of the story dug in a little too much and started to feel like an anchor that really didn’t let the weird aspects hit their fullest potential. It’s hard to explain without writing an entire essay about the plot. I can sum it up by saying that while I know the story is about the ambiguity of walking through the shadows, I think it either needed to turn the lights completely on or off at some point. Which isn’t entirely fair because it’s obvious that the author was trying to walk that line and does it pretty well, but for me I would have liked a bit more commitment one way or another.
One other note about the multimedia aspects. The book has a lot of graphics in the form of pictures, news stories, and web pages, and I downloaded the app that lets you scan some of these that provides bonus content like audio recordings or a diary of a character. That was generally well done as a way to provide some extra atmosphere without being too much of a distraction. I wouldn’t want it in every book, but for a story like this it was a gimmick that worked well without being overused....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley.
Megan Abbott’s recent books have been focused on the terrifying inner lives of modern teenage giI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley.
Megan Abbott’s recent books have been focused on the terrifying inner lives of modern teenage girls, but she returned to her old school noir roots for this short story that’s part of a series of bibliomysteries done by Mysterious Press.
Penny is a former actress turned make-up artist in Hollywood during the early ‘50s who thinks she caught a great break by finding a comfortable bungalow to rent, and as a bonus the place is filled with books from a former tenant. Unfortunately, the previous resident committed suicide in the place and Penny begins hearing strange noises and fears that her creepy landlady is spying on her.
The plot of this is perfect for a nasty little jab to the nose of a short story, but what’s amazing is how well Penny is developed as a character and surrounded by a cast of vivid supporting characters in so few pages. It also does a fantastic job of feeling like a by-gone era of Hollyood as well as having the atmosphere of a film noir.
The only bad thing is that it made me crave a longer story by Mighty Megan....more
In post-war Los Angeles a screenwriter wakes up from a blackout drunk to find an actress that was starring in the movie he was working on has been murIn post-war Los Angeles a screenwriter wakes up from a blackout drunk to find an actress that was starring in the movie he was working on has been murdered in the next room. Afraid of police scrutiny he flees the scene only to be shocked later when he learns that the movie studio has covered up the crime by making it appear to be a suicide. The writer tries to push aside his guilt and move on with helping to get the picture completed with a replacement actress, but his interactions with a variety of people involved in the film keep putting clues to what happened that night in his path.
Kinda sounds like a James Ellroy novel, doesn’t it? Nope. It’s writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips teaming up yet again to deliver a top notch crime comic that feels as if they managed to somehow bottle noir itself and use it as the ink on the page.
Seriously, I’m a little in awe of how Brubaker has regularly managed to blend superheroes with the mystery and spy genres, and when he teams up with Phillips the two of them always hit a whole new level of mixing those elements together to create fantastic comics. This reminds me of the great work they did with the straight up crime stories in their Criminal series, and I’m already looking forward to reading more and see how this old school Hollywood mystery unravels. My only complaint is that this collection felt a little short, but that just leaves more to read later....more
(I received a free advance copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)
Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt wrote this unflinching accoun(I received a free advance copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)
Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt wrote this unflinching account of his battle with addiction during the late ‘90s, but he didn’t spend his days cooking meth with bikers or whoring himself out for crack. Poor Patton was a movie junkie who found plenty of dealers to get him high in the theaters of Los Angeles.
A double feature of Billy Wilder films at the New Beverly Cinema was the gateway drug that led Patton down a relentless path of devouring movies and cataloging them in a diary as well as notations in several film books he had. His work and his relationships suffered as he became unable to relate to other people’s every day interests that didn't involve movies, and he rationalized his behavior by thinking that it would eventually give him the insight to make a great film of his own. His descent continued until he hits bottom shortly after seeing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Which is understandable because a lot of us never felt like seeing a movie again after that one.
Ah, but seriously folks…
I noted in my review of Oswalt’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland that I found the darker elements of that memoir intriguing, but that he’d seemed a little scared of making it too personal and sincere so he’d inserted segments of pure humor in it as deflections. Here we have him recounting a period when he feels like he let his love of movies of get the better of him, and how coming to terms with that changed the way he approached his own career as well as what was really important to him as a person. Since this is a professional comedian telling the story, it’s still funny, but it doesn’t seem like he’s using humor as a shield like it did in his previous book.
Here’s the tricky part for me about reviewing this: I’m a Patton Oswalt fan who finds him not only hilarious but also an actor capable of great work in both TV and film. I love reading about what creative people think about the process of actually turning ideas into something that can be shared. I’ll also confess to being a movie junkie. While I’ve never chased the dragon as hard as Patton did, I am the kind of person who is perfectly happy to kill an afternoon at a special showing of Seven Samurai or spend the better part of a day in a Marvel movie marathon. When Patton tells a story about seeing Last Man Standing and subjecting the friend he was with to the whole history of how it’s actually the same story as A Fistful of Dollars which is pretty much a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo which was heavily influenced by Dashiell Hammet’s Red Harvest, it made me cringe because I said the same exact thing to the person I saw it with, too.
So this book obviously hit a sweet spot for me, but I could see another reader (Someone who doesn’t have their own custom I HATE! I HATE! coffee mug based on Oswalt’s Text routine.) maybe not liking this book quite so much. Such a person might point out that Patton is essentially berating his younger self for the time spent on his movie obsession rather than creating his own work as well as lamenting the time he didn’t spend with friends and family. And they’d have a valid point.
Because for all his self-criticism here it’s a little odd that Patton doesn’t give himself more credit for what he was accomplishing at the time which was turning himself into a top-notch comedian by performing relentlessly as well as landing regular work in the movies and on TV. Yeah, maybe he was on King of Queens for years instead of making his own Citizen Kane, but that helped him get to a point where he’s got to do other things like his great and disturbing performance as a sports nut in Big Fan. And now he’s married and has a daughter that he loves dearly so he figured out that whole work/life balance thing, right?
So what exactly is this guy bitching about? That he wasted a lot of time in the ‘90s watching movies? Hell, we all did that.
However, it the book works for you, then you‘ll find a lot more than that. It’s hard to break down the stew of events and small epiphanies that make us who we are, and that’s what Patton has tried to do here. He’s describing a period when he wasn't satisfied with what he was doing and was flailing around for answers by immersing himself obsessively in something he loved. He did finally learn something from all his time watching movies, but it wasn't what he went looking for. Maybe he didn’t become Quentin Tarantino, but he did grow into being Patton Oswalt. And like a lot of his fans, I’m happy it worked out that way.
Hey, I just got an email from Alamo Drafthouse telling me that they’re having a screening of The Apartment this weekend. Maybe I should check that out....
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by“Hello, Mr. Ellroy.”
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by the unsolved murder of your mother which occurred when you were a child and led you to become obsessed with crime and women. You frequently dreamed of scenarios in which you could save damsels in distress. You let your rich fantasy life rule you and with no ambition or discipline you became a homeless drunk and drug addict in your teens. You eventually hit bottom and got sober. You became a writer and used your fascination with true crime and post-war Los Angeles to create what you called the L.A. Quartet. You started with a fictionalized version of the Black Dahlia case, and one of the books, L.A. Confidential, became an acclaimed movie. You wrote a trilogy called Underworld USA that followed bad men doing bad things in the shadows of recent American history. You investigated the death of your mother with an ex-cop and published the results as a memoir. You wrote a second autobiography in which you admitted that much of what you wrote about your state of mind in the first book wasn’t true. You recently published a new novel called Perfidia that you state is the start of a new Second L.A. Quartet.
“What are your impressions of Perfidia? Please be brief.”
“Perfidia begins the day before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese. Many of the characters are ones you used in other books like Dudley Smith, a corrupt police officer who was a large part of the L.A. Quartet, and Kay Lake from The Black Dahlia. Others are based on real life people like William ‘Whiskey Bill’ Parker, another LAPD officer who would go on to become the chief of police. A new addition is a brilliant police crime scene technician, Hideo Ashida, of Japanese descent. The murder of a Japanese family coincides with the news of the attack, and the investigation takes place as L.A. is consumed by a mixture of patriotism and paranoia. Corruption enters the scene immediately with many people scheming on ways to profit from the war even as the ships are still burning at Pearl Harbor.”
“That’s a summary. I asked for your impressions.”
“There is a lot here to appeal to your fans. The wartime setting with a mystery that blends fiction with history against a L.A. that is completely corrupt is something that you know how to utilize to provide a gritty noir atmosphere. Your plotting with the characters aligning and betraying each other almost at whim is as dense and intricate as ever. Your style of short sentences in a stream of consciousness patter as the perspective shifts from character to character is still sharp, and you retain the knack of writing scenes of brutal violence that seem to pass in moments yet leave lasting effects.”
“That’s the positive side. Please tell me where you think the book was lacking.”
“While some longtime fans will be delighted at the way you’ve incorporated so many characters from your other books, it also brings some of the problems inherent to prequels into the mix.”
“Explain.”
“If you know that a character is alive and has a career with the police department in a book set after Perfidia, then I know that they will not die or lose their job in this book despite anything that may occur. This naturally removes some of the drama.”
“Naturally. Please continue.”
“If not done well, the characters may act in ways or accumulate knowledge that seems at odds with the other incarnation. For example,(view spoiler)[ the idea that Dudley Smith is the father of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, is something that is pretty shocking and wasn’t even hinted at that I can recall in his previous appearances. (hide spoiler)]
“I understand the point. Move on."
“Usually your books take place over a period of months or years. This allows for on-going events and new information to change the perspectives and motives of characters. Since this novel occurs entirely in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor, the time frame is greatly condensed from your usual work yet you incorporate as many betrayals, shocking revelations and changes of allegiances as your other books. This makes all of the characters seem rushed and erratic. Plus, everyone in the book seems to have an amazing ability to look into the future. None of the major players seem that concerned about the war with the Japanese. All of them somehow immediately know that the war will be won and that there will future tension between America and Russia.”
“Are there any other things you consider shortcomings of the book you would like to share?
“You also use some of the same phrases and tricks here that seem in danger of becoming tropes of your work.”
“State some examples.”
“Using short sentences to indicate a series of actions. For example, ‘Dudley winked. Dudley scratched. Dudley howled….’“
“And?”
“And characters making instant judgments and psychoanalysis of each other that is 100% accurate.”
“And?”
“And repeatedly using the word ‘and’ as a way of continuing the flow of information.”
“Very droll, Mr. Kemper. And?”
“And you really got into this thing where a lot of the dialogue is someone demanding information in a blunt and condescending fashion. You used to save that for when one had a definite edge on another, like J. Edgar Hoover interrogating an underling, but it seemed like it happened on almost every page in this book. These conversations also frequently have one person delivering a set of orders.”
“You have communicated your viewpoint, Mr. Kemper. You will write up a review on Perfidia. You will give it no less than three stars. You may bring up the points you have outlined here, but you will still credit my work as still being an enjoyable read. You will also praise my ability to create damaged characters operating in amoral ways for selfish reasons at a street level and use them to illustrate broader themes on subjects like the effect of History on the individual. Once you have completed this review, you will post it on Goodreads. If you don’t do this, I’ll engage in another trope of mine, and have you shot in the face repeatedly. Do you agree, Mr. Kemper?”
“One three star review of Perfidia coming right up!”
They say that you can’t judge a book by its cover. However, my copy of this features a man apparently plunging to his doom after falling out of a hot They say that you can’t judge a book by its cover. However, my copy of this features a man apparently plunging to his doom after falling out of a hot air balloon. That’s accurate which proves that you can’t always believe old adages.
Travis McGee agrees to look into the murder of a wealthy man. Rich guys are getting bumped off all the time in crime stories, but the twist here is that this fella was already dying of cancer. Was it just a robbery gone bad or was someone looking for an angle to get his estate? McGee finds a possible connections to biker clubs and Hollywood, and he turns to some old friends for help in gaining access to both of those communities.
This is a pretty solid crime novel overall. McGee gets to do his usual thing of acting as both con man and detective to try and figure out who killed the rich old bastard and there’s a decent mystery for him to unravel. The social commentary and McGee’s ennui with modern life are toned down a lot at this point almost as if MacDonald was writing him as being more accepting of the world although there is one memorable rant in which Travis bitches mightily about how he keeps getting put into more and more computer databases. I don’t think McGee would have been a big user of social media.
Since we’re up to 1982 we also see a reduction in some of the sexism that goes along with the adventures of the ole Sea Cock. In fact, Trav is a one woman man in this one after hooking up with a pretty hotel manager. Of course, she only got that job after being the secretary and lover of the rich old bastard who died, and she lucked into the gig after that. Because a woman could never just earn an important job like running a hotel if she hadn’t been trained in the ways of business by the guy she was banging. And the lady that Meyer has a romantic interlude with is also a successful owner of a chain of newspapers, but of course she had to inherit the business from her late husband. That’s even less important than all the work she did to get into bikini shape for her vacation. So it���s not exactly a great example of feminism, but baby steps are welcome at this point. ...more
Elmore Leonard had a bad Hollywood experience in the mid-‘80s of working on a film adaptation of LaBrava with Dustin Hoffman. Leonard did multiple unpElmore Leonard had a bad Hollywood experience in the mid-‘80s of working on a film adaptation of LaBrava with Dustin Hoffman. Leonard did multiple unpaid rewrites at the actor’s request, but then Hoffman bailed on the project after six months of meetings leaving Leonard with nothing to show for his time. Leonard’s revenge was Get Shorty and what sweet revenge it is.
Chili Palmer is a small time loan shark in Miami who once got into a beef with another gangster, Ray Barboni, who has held a grudge against him. Unfortunately, Chili ends up working for Ray who immediately demands that Chili shake down overdue payment from a dry cleaner. A twisted trail eventually leads Chili to LA where he gets mixed up with Harry Zimm, a small-time producer of horror movies who has a new script that flighty superstar actor Michael Weir has expressed an interest in. Harry thinks he can use Michael’s name to get a big studio deal to make something better than schlock for a change , but he’s got a problem with a drug dealer name Bo Catlett who usually finances his movies to launder drug money.
Chili is a big movie buff who thinks he might give up loan sharking for producing, and he sets out to help Harry get a deal with the help of Karen Flores, a former actress known for screaming in Harry’s horror movies who just so happens to be Michael’s ex. Unfortunately, Bo Catlett has also been dreaming of breaking into the film industry and starts trying to drive Chili away from Harry with the idea of taking over the project.
The surface level of this is funny enough with its core idea of a gangster trying to get into the movie business, but where it achieves greatness is the twist it takes once Chili meets Michael. When his pitch for Harry’s movie isn’t getting through, Chili starts talking about his recent adventures, and Michael is intrigued. Without realizing it, Chili essentially begins pitching his story as it’s happening to Michael, and the short actor pounces on the idea of playing a loan shark. The problem is that Chili doesn’t know how it’s going to end yet.
Leonard always had a great knack of playing off the way that people perceive themselves and each other. This pays off even more since so many Hollywood characters are involved that the story is being discussed and thought about as a movie even while it happens. So when Chili confronts a thug of Catlett’s and throws him down a flight of stairs while Karen watches, she’s mentally breaking it down like a film scene instead of being shocked by what she saw. When someone asks Chili who the protagonist is, Chili is shocked that it’s not apparent that the loan shark is the good guy because to him it’s obvious that he’s the hero of this story.
While some writers might have let this idea of a story unfolding and being pitched as a movie at the same time get too clever for its own good and been tempted to push the idea into complete nonsense, Leonard’s brevity and sharp plotting keep it grounded as a crime story with humor rather than letting it turn into some kind of meta-fiction writing exercise. As usual, you also get all the hallmarks of Leonard in his prime with great dialogue and memorable characters.
Of course, the ultimate fitting end to Leonard’s satirizing of Hollywood is that this was eventually turned into a hit film. Dustin Hoffman was not involved....more
It’s January 1, 1950 in Los Angeles. A witch hunt for commies in the movie industry is gearing up under the guise of patriotiCan you dig this, hepcat?
It’s January 1, 1950 in Los Angeles. A witch hunt for commies in the movie industry is gearing up under the guise of patriotism, but its real agenda is to make the careers of the ruthless men running it and help the studios keep labor costs down. Corruption scandals have created a lot of bad blood between the city cops and the county sheriff’s department. Rival gangsters Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen are fighting for control of the town. Everybody is too busy with their own schemes to care about the brutal murder of a nobody jazz musician. Everybody, that is, except for LASD Deputy Danny Upshaw.
Danny is a brilliant young detective with a secret he can't even admit to himself. He recognizes the murder as the work of a true madman and is instantly obsessed with finding the killer, but his investigation is hampered by the jurisdictional feuds between his department and the city cops.
Meanwhile LAPD Lieutenant Mal Considine is recruited to work on gathering evidence against Communists for a grand jury, and the job is just the thing he needs to boost his promising career and help him with some family issues. The downside is that he has to work with Buzz Meeks that he’s got an old grudge against. Meeks is an ex-cop who is equally comfortable paying a bribe or cracking a skull with his trusty night stick. He works as a fixer for Howard Hughes, and his cozy relationships with the crooks and film industry folks make him the perfect bag man and troubleshooter for the Red hunting enterprise. Eventually the two investigations intersect, and all three men have to deal with the consequences of who they are and what they’ve done.
This isn’t my favorite James Ellroy book, but it is a pivotal one in my own reading history because it’s the first one of his I read after finding a paperback copy at a library sale back before the world moved on so I credit it for turning me onto his work. It’s also a turning point for Ellroy because it’s where he created the template he’d follow for most of his later books. We’ve got an unholy trinity of three men capable of committing monstrous crimes in service of dubious causes to further their own ambitions and obsessions. Eventually circumstances will make them seek to atone for their misdeeds, but their attempts at redemption can be as destructive and blood soaked as the things they already regret. That three character structure and basic story arcs are pretty much the backbone of Ellroy’s career since this one.
Ellroy has a tendency to go long and let his plots wander in a hundred directions before gathering up the threads at the end. That gives his books a sprawling and epic feel, but it can also be frustrating and confusing as a reader if you’re trying to keep track of who did what and why. While I love the way that Ellroy mixes fact and fiction so that you feel like you’re reading the secret history that never made the newspapers it seems like he’s also trying to mimic the messiness of real events. It gives it some authenticity, but it sometimes feel like it’s clashing with attempts to fashion in into a coherent crime novel.
For me it’s always the characters that keep me coming back to Ellroy, and that’s the case here. There’s a mix of courage and cowardice in all of them, and Buzz remains one of my favorites as the guy who knows all the angles but in typical Ellroy fashion can’t resist doing something incredibly stupid. Danny Upshaw is also intriguing because he’s probably the closest Ellroy has come to having one of his leads be pure and uncorrupted, but even Danny isn’t above beating up a witness for information or committing a crime if it advances his cause.
While this doesn’t hit the highs of his best work it’s still a bold creation by a writer that shows the first use of all the elements he’d pull together to hit his peak....more
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