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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bradbury continues the magic, this time in Hollywood., 21 Jan 2003
Setting this novel during the glory days of Big Studio Hollywood, in which he himself was an earnest young screenwriter, Ray Bradbury sets out to create a murder mystery in which a twenty years-dead body is found on a ladder leaning against a wall between a graveyard and the movie studio next door. Over-the-top Hollywood characters and wannabes, "beasts" and monsters, and faux settings, such as Notre Dame, Calvary, and even the speaker's grandparents' house in Green Town, Illinois, fill this book with the illusions in which the film industry excels, while the machinations of ego-driven moguls provide motivations for murder.No one should read this novel expecting a hard-boiled mystery, however. Bradbury's obvious love of people and of life itself is so heartfelt and overwhelming that it makes any sense of toughness unbelievable--and there are many other reasons to enjoy this book. Grounded by Midwestern values, fundamentally decent, and lacking the ego which seems to drive the rest of the industry, Bradbury shines in describing a mad Hollywood, "where great elephant ideas go to die. A graveyard for lunatics," where men so dedicate their lives to the creation of illusions that they often lose sight of reality. His wacky imagination flourishes, and it is clear that despite his sometimes flippant, tongue-in-cheek observations, his irony, and his criticism of Hollywood excess, that he loves the place and the exotic characters he meets there. With imagery and descriptions that bring to life every aspect of studio activity, trenchant philosophical observations inserted casually (almost as throwaways), self-deprecating humor, and visions of plain folks challenging the studio bigwigs, Bradbury's mystery ambles toward an almost amiable conclusion. For the lover of Bradbury, this is another chance to share his visions and his enthusiasm for a life lived honestly. Most readers will undoubtedly share the feelings of Constance, who tells speaker/Bradbury, "How lucky to be inside your skin...Don't ever change. We stupid doomsayers, cynics, monsters laugh, but we need you. Otherwise, Merlin dies, or a carpenter fixing the Round Table saws it crooked, or the guy who oils the armor substitutes cat pee. Live forever. Promise?"
Mary Whipple
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3.0 out of 5 stars
enjoyable murder mystery, 25 Jun 2005
This is the second in Bradbury's latter-day trilogy of murder-mysteries which began with 1985's 'Death Is A Lonely Business'. That book ostensibly told of a series of murders taking place in Venice, California in 1950, and the efforts of a young writer and his varous acquaintances, chiefly Detective Crumley and silent movie star Constance Rattigan, to unmask the killer. In typically deceptive Bradbury-esque fashion, however, the book is not what it seems. It is less a detective novel, rather an easy-going amble through a bunch of delightfully eccentric character vignettes and bizarre events that eventually manage to tie up. This follow-up, set a few years later, follows much the same pattern, ablbeit a tad less successfully. The setting is a Hollywood studio and its neighbouring graveyard, where a replica of a long-dead movie mogul is hoisted on the wall one Halloween night. A mysteriously deformed character - the Beast - is on the prowl through the city streets, not to mention a host of backlot settings. It isn't long before a further series of notably strange secondary characters are dropping like flies. Once more our autobiographical young scribe investigates... The book is as rambling and amiable as the first but it lacks the atmosphere this time around. After a twenty year hiatus from novel writing, Bradbury returned in the eighties with gusto, evoking the eerie canals and dying-on-its-feet community of Venice with macabre vividness. He created a dark sense of malaise that is absent in the sequel. Although he succeeds in creating alternate worlds on the studio backlot which accurately mirror his familiar theme of realities within realities, they don't grip as much as the rotting backwaters of Venice. His subsidiary characters - which include Jesus Christ no less - live and breathe in three dimensions, however, as the plot - which veers uncomfortably close to an episode of Scooby Doo upon occasion - unfolds. They sustain the book throughout its three hundred pages. Bradbury's observations and philosophies are what really enliven this novel: they pepper the paragraphs with sparkle, wit, and not a little regret. Seventy at the time of writing, he remains a major creative force.
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by Ray Bradbury
