An effervescent Tinseltown romp, crackling with atmosphere and nutty humor.
A fake mystery writer finds herself searching for stolen jewelry and missing—or possibly devoured—persons in exuberant 1937 Hollywood in this frothy period yarn.
When bestselling mystery writer Dame Alice Cartwright declines to traipse from the English Cotswolds to L.A. to do contracted rewrites of her Lady Irwin’s Diamonds screenplay, her New York publisher Dermot Delaney panics over the prospect of returning her $25,000 advance from the Farley Brothers studio. Fortunately, he hits upon the absurd workaround of sending office assistant Penelope Greenleigh to Hollywood, posing as the author, to do the rewrites. Arriving in L.A. as Dame Alice, sporting a gray wig, frumpy British tweeds, and an improvised English accent that doesn’t always obscure her Jersey roots, Penelope is whisked to the storied Chasen’s restaurant to hobnob with Hollywood stars, wannabes, and sharks, including Lady Irwin’s hack director, Skipper Farley; the picture’s vain star, Zsa Zsa Le Coque, currently carrying on an adulterous affair with Argentinian playboy Federico Fulco; and baleful gossip columnist Hattie Holiday, who immediately marks Penelope as an impostor. More panic ensues when Zsa Zsa disappears from Chasen’s along with the $30,000 Miramar Diamonds necklace used as the movie’s titular prop. Taking after Dame Alice, Penelope starts sleuthing, assisted by gal pal Molly Lopez, handsome Det. Jake Chu, pixilated oil heiress Emerald Elliman, and Skipper’s factotum, Toby, a teenage wunderkind who’s addressing Hollywood’s direst medical problems by inventing early versions of Botox, collagen lip injections, and Alka-Tonic, a hangover remedy made of 100 percent relabeled vodka. Penelope and her posse rummage through glitzy parties, swanky mansions, and the chic Beverly Hills Hotel in pursuit of the necklace but come up dry—until the real Dame Alice unexpectedly arrives and threatens to expose Penelope’s charade.
Journalist and author Mahoney provides a fun panorama of an old Hollywood that’s very much like a classic screwball comedy: glamorous, slightly tawdry, and full of glorious grifters remaking themselves from starry-eyed hicks into silver-screen deities. The cheerfully ridiculous plot makes no more sense than is necessary to keep the characters buzzing as they wander through Hollywood landmarks, spy Marx Brothers on the horizon, fend off the occasional mobster, theorize about a possible cannibal murder of a beer maker by a chowder manufacturer, and generally mill about firing witticisms at each other. Penelope is a passive heroine: She mainly plays straight woman to the colorful antics of the various supporting characters who dominate the plot until Dame Alice arrives to impart some direction to the narrative. Still, Mahoney’s whip-smart prose and sparkling dialogue supply plenty of entertainment, from bitchy repartee (“‘I’m 40 myself, though you’d probably never guess!’ offered Emerald merrily. ‘What birthday is coming up for you, Hattie—70? Or was that a few years ago?’”) to material-girl reverie (“‘There are some diamond mines and about a million acres of land,’ said Zsa Zsa, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the dollar signs which had appeared in her huge blue eyes. ‘But I love Federico for himself. I mean, he’s gorgeous’”), to droll suspense (“‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ I whispered. ‘That Morty chopped up Barry King, and turned him into soup?’ asked Molly. ‘You bet I am!’”). The result is a laugh-out-loud whodunnit that sends up Hollywood’s beguiling nonsense.
An effervescent Tinseltown romp, crackling with atmosphere and nutty humor.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 193
Publisher: Wrenfield Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fast-moving fun and a highly creative plot.
Bloody murder spoils folks’ fun while megafauna return from extinction.
What a glorious way to spend a honeymoon: Mark and Olivia Gunnerson go backpacking through the vast Erebus Resort in the mountains of Colorado, where scientists have “de-extincted” species like the woolly mammoth and other Pleistocene megafauna. Just watch the peaceful beasts at their watering holes. Behold the giant armadillos, and the indricothere that make mammoths look like dwarfs. The scientists have removed genes for aggression in these re-creations, so humans will be safe unless they’re accidentally stepped on. And yet, someone doesn’t want the newlyweds camping there, made evident by their disappearance without a trace, save only a copious amount of blood outside their tent. Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent in Charge Frankie Cash takes the case. What happened to Mark and Olivia, and why? The park has no predators, so humans must be responsible. But where are the bodies? A doctor suggests that due to the amount of blood found, the victims may have—gasp!—been decapitated. The matter gathers national attention, and things only get worse as more people die. The late groom’s aggrieved billionaire father demands immediate answers, and of course he interferes with the investigation: “You’ll see me now, you son of a bitch, and tell me what the fuck you’re doing to find my son!” And speaking of F-bombs, surely it is possible to write a thriller with fewer—maybe use one or two to establish a character and then move on to more creative language? Anyway, the investigators are doing a lot. The action seldom lets up, and readers will feel the mounting tension and excitement. The setting itself is a scientific wonder, and it must tie into the murders somehow. Meanwhile, Hollywood is filming an action movie in the park, and the pièce de résistance will be the spectacular explosion of a train. But wouldn’t you know, Preston has other plans. Imagine Jurassic Park with the timeline brought forward to the Pleistocene, and you have the Erebus Resort. Science, imagination, storytelling, and action are all here.
Fast-moving fun and a highly creative plot.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780765317704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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