- School & Library Binding: 232 pages
- Publisher: San Val (Oct 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0613171667
- ISBN-13: 978-0613171663
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.1 x 2.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,419,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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First Sentence
Venice, California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Venice, California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm a big fan of Bradbury's, but it has to be said that his golden years were the forties and fifties, and that following his great novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' in about 1963, the quality of his work dipped sharply. By the time the eighties rolled around his short stories were shadows of their former selves: however this unexpected return to the novel after twenty years represents a big improvement. The story isn't really the thing - someone is bumping off the colourful characters of Venice, California in about 1950, and a young, imaginative novelist (sound familiar?) is caught up in the hunt. What makes this one is Bradbury's renewed attention to language: his writing is vividly descriptive and marvellously atmospheric. His characters are strongly drawn and the whole thing makes for an entertaining, somewhat meandering and happily skewed take on a 1950's style detective story. It is the prose which displays imagination, rather than the tale, and this is no bad thing. There are also two sequels - A Graveyard for Lunatics and Let's All Kill Constance.
Format:Paperback
A book that is increasingly difficult to find on the high street, Death Is A Lonely Business is a true rollercoaster of suspense, without rockets, robots or space. Ray's prose will grip you, fan or not, from cover to cover.
Format:Paperback
More commonly known for his sci-fi writing, Ray Bradbury has written a detective story as murky, compelling and original as any since 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. His Thomas-like use of language creates the wraithes of mist that shroud the narative, as well as supplying a wry, querky humour to offset the grim subject matter. The opening line, "Venice, California, in the old days had much to recomend it to people who like to be sad" sets an expectation that is never disappointed. The reader is lead into a vanished world - even as it is vanishing - where misfits, freeks and eccentrics are the norm, where our own perception of reality is challenged and reappraised. In fact, Bradbury creates an Earth as mysterious and fascinating as any distant planet of the imagination. The plot itself isn't particularly clever, but this book isn't about that. It's about atmosphere, obserdity and the further-flung reaches of the human condition. And it's precisely because the story doesn't rely purely on surprises and a clever twist at the end that you can enjoy reading it time and again.
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