“Said it was like someone pried off the lid and showed him how Hollywood really works.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JUN 20, 2011)

Imagine a kick-ass action flick–say one starring that perennial crowd-pleaser, Bruce Willis, and then imagine the source material, and you’d just about have an image of Duane Swierczynski’s latest book, Fun and Games. This is the first entry in the Charlie Hardie trilogy. Hell and Gone follows in October 2011, and the third novel, Point and Shoot is scheduled for publication in March 2012. Fun and Games delves into the old Hollywood story that studio fixers leap in to stabilize publicity nightmares. This legend has bounced around Hollywood for decades and still lingers over the deaths of notables such as Jean Harlow’s husband, Paul Bern. Recently actor Randy Quaid and his wife fled to Canada and applied for refugee status on the grounds that they are in fear of their lives due to the “Hollywood Star Whackers.” They state that their claims are substantiated by the mysterious deaths of various Hollywood luminaries, including David Carradine.

In an art-follows-life sort of way … enter Fun and Games….

The main character in Fun and Games is professional house sitter, Charlie Hardie. This is the latest gig for a man who hails from Philadelphia and has a shady past which includes a nebulous relationship with Philadelphia police and the FBI. But that was a few years back, and these days, Hardie is in danger of becoming a couch potato:

“Yes, he sort of used to be something like a cop. But that had been three long years ago. A lot of drinking and poor eating and general sloth had atrophied his muscles. He was slower, larger. His liver wasn’t talking to him anymore, and his heart gave him little friendly reminders every so often that he might want to get his ass up and move around a little. The mornings he felt good simply meant that he’d passed out before he could have any more to drink.”

House-sitting allows him to drift around the country while he lives out of a suitcase. Hardie likes to keep it simple, and he has a few rules for house-sitting: “He didn’t do plants, didn’t do pets. He made sure people didn’t steal shit.” His dream gig is to stay in a house, alone, and watch old films. He has only one rule when it comes to film. He won’t watch anything made after he was born. Hardie’s latest job is to watch the isolated Hollywood Hills home of Andrew Lowenbruck, a Hollywood music producer. Given that Lowenbruck has an extensive classic film library, it looks like a dream gig to Hardie, but he hadn’t counted Them into the equation….

When Hardie walks into Lowenbruck’s home, he walks slap bang into a “narrative” about to be staged by The Accident People. This is a team of highly trained, and deadly equipped assassins who are about to snuff out bit part action flick actress, Lane Madden. The Accident People have tried and failed to kill Lane in a fake car accident, so when Hardie walks into the deadly scenario at Lowenbruck’s home, he enters completely unprepared to meet a bruised, terrified, washed up-actress who’s fighting for her life against pissed-off, time-stressed assassins. Not good.

Fun and Games is breathless roller-coaster ride of non-stop action from cover-to-cover. There are simply no down times in the story, and Swierczynski’s comic book roots are evident in the plot and action sequencing. Hardie and Lane make a good team. Hardie is the laconic, practical sort who has walked away from a life he can no longer handle while Lane Madden is the bimbo bit player who discovers untapped reserves of courage and ingenuity. It’s no exaggeration to say that once I picked up this book, I was reluctant to put it down. I’ll hazard a guess that Swierczynski has a hit trilogy in his future.

Has Fun and Games been optioned for the film version yet? If not, Hollywood, what are you waiting for?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 35 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mulholland Books; Original edition (June 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official blog for Duane Swierczynski
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bust, Slide and The Maxby Ken Bruen and Jason Starr Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Bibliography:

• Secret Dead Men (2005)
• The Wheel Man (2005)
• Severance Package (2008)
• The Blonde (2007)
• Expiration Date (2010)

Charlie Hardie trilogy:

• Fun and Games (June 2011)
• Hell and Gone (October 2011)
• Point and Shoot (March 2012)

“As for me, I made myself scarce. I had enough problems with it at school, and it was too much to cope with dashed expectations on the faces of strangers. It wasn’t my fault that I had grown up. I couldn’t stay a seven year-old forever, trapped on the pages of the books. I was still just about recognizable as the boy in Lila’s drawings and the comparison was not a favorable one. I came to learn the national characteristics of disappointment: the resentfulness of the English, the downright hostility of the French, who looked as if they might ask for their money back, the touching sadness on the gentle faces of the Japanese – such pain that I both was and wasn’t the boy in the books. I was Dorian Gray in reverse: my attic was in every bookshop in the world.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (DEC 24, 2010)

The first half of Mr. Toppit takes its readers for a grand ride. This debut novel, written by Charles Elton, has had quite a following in the United Kingdom and has just been released in the United States. It is a novel about speculation and conjecture, the ‘what ifs’ of life, and wishing things might have been different. Mostly though, it is about Luke Hayman and how he became immortalized in his father’s Hayseed Chronicles as the boy who eluded Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood.

Arthur Hayman has led a somewhat ordinary life working in the film industry as a writer of small scenes for mostly grade B movies. At the same time, he has been writing a series of books for older children called The Hayseed Chronicles. The series is about Luke Hayseed and how he has tricked and evaded the evil Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood. Mr. Toppit is not only evil but he is cruel, invincible, invisible and, like the worst dreams of a child’s nightmares, ever-present. There are five books in the series and, though Arthur has a publisher, these books have not done very well and are not well known.

One day, Arthur is walking down the street and gets run over by a truck. Laurie Clow, an American tourist in London who has a part-time radio show in Modesto, California, sees what happens and goes to Arthur’s side. She stays with him until he’s placed in an ambulance. Arthur dies from the injuries and, somehow, Laurie manages to get herself invited to the family home and becomes an indispensable fixture. There is Martha, Arthur’s flaky and obtuse wife, with secrets up the yin-yang. Then there is Rachel who, left out of her father’s books entirely, lives her life abusing drugs and experimenting with life on the wild side. Luke, up to this time, has lived his life as a relatively conforming child. He has not yet become famous. This is about to change. There is also Lila, a laugh-out-loud funny character, who has been the artist for the books. She hates Laurie and will go to any length to try and get her out of Hayman’s home. Lila is histrionic and a hypochondriac, a mixture that garners some good laughs.

As the book opens Luke is twelve years old and Rachel is sixteen. Laurie returns to Modesto and decides to read the books live on her radio show. This creates a sensation and the books become mega-sellers – think Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh. Charles Elton, during an interview, stated that one of the reasons he wrote this book is that he wondered what happens to the characters that books are based upon in mega-sellers such as Winnie the Pooh. Meanwhile, Laurie moves to San Francisco and then Los Angeles where she has a syndicated television show. Her contact with the Haymans is much less but they live with the fallout of their instant fame.

Once Laurie reaches her zenith of fame, the book slows down and the story becomes more drawn out and less immediate. The reader is privy to Luke’s struggle with his own identity as Luke Hayman and NOT Luke Hayseed. He spends a lot of time trying to track down his sister who is often out of contact. He reflects on how his life would have been different if he was not known as Luke Hayseed. And why did his father write just about him? There was plenty of room to share with his sister. By the time the book ends, Luke is a university student and Rachel is a young woman. Family secrets abound and many of them are revealed in part two. However, there are parts of the book that are just left hanging and don’t come together, parts I was waiting to learn about – like Laurie’s relationship with her friend that went sour. What happened with Martha and Ray?

The book is immensely readable. I went through the close to 400 pages in three days and felt like I really had a sense of each character. Charles Elton is an author to watch. He has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a wonderful gift of imagination.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 32 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press; 1 edition (November 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	BookPage interview with Charles Elton
EXTRAS:	Excerpt (see look inside on publisher’s page)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Not the same, but still a childhood affected by a fictional hero: Dream City by Brendan Short

Bibliography:

• Mr. Toppit (2009; November 2010 in US)

“Sometimes she sees her life as a series of set pieces rolling in and then out again, realistic enough to fool the camera but unable to withstand closer examination. Any inspection would reveal the flatness of everything, the false walls and painted-on doorknobs, the paper and paste in which everything is rendered. She would like to see it as the camera would see it. And so she keeps her distance. ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (DEC 14, 2010)

For the longest time, growing up in rural Virginia, Birdie Baker is convinced she is destined to follow the path set forth by her devout Christian parents. Like them, as a Jehovah’s Witness, she will spread the word of the Lord, marry, settle down and wrap it up. But the sense of unease that plagues her even after she is married to a church-going man named Judah, is worsened when she runs into her high school drama teacher at the grocery store. “What are you still doing here?” he asks, “I figured the next time I saw you it would be in a movie.” Eventually, leave Virgina she does. Birdie pools all her savings toward a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles.

When the story first finds Birdie in LA, she is nearly 30 (although she is told to set her age as 26) and struggling to make it big. She does mainly “appendage work, a glorified crash test dummy” where parts of her body fill in for more famous actresses’. Her biggest break—if you can call it that—has been in a commercial for fabric softeners.

The wheels of success might be moving too slowly for Birdie’s satisfaction, but her devoted agent Redmond, promises her bigger and better things are just around the corner. “These things progress organically,” he points out. “Organically?” she says, “Are we farming? Do me a favor. Make it fast and artificial.”

Forever on the cusp of success, Birdie must schmooze at endless parties and try to make an impression. Word-of-mouth, after all, is big here in Hollywood. It is at one of these parties that she meets 21-year-old Lewis, another struggling actor who is even worse off than she is. Lewis works at one temp job after the other, hoping to land a job—any job in the movies.

Author Jenny Hollowell does a spectacular job here with her debut novel. Her prose is sparkling, crisp and edgy all the while moving the story relentlessly forward. There are heartbreaking moments in the novel—Lewis’ excitement at finding a job as an extra on a set and his subsequent letdown is a wonderful example.

In an interview at the end of the book, Hollowell explains that she sought to shine light on how as adults, we “struggle to navigate the disparity between our parents’ expectations of us and the life we imagine for ourselves.” She achieves this objective wonderfully. Birdie is endlessly racked with guilt at having left—at cutting loose the strings that once held her so strongly.

The city of Los Angeles too is a vibrant entity here. As she describes one Hollywood party, Hollowell writes: “The city lies supplicant beneath the party, its lights sparkling and winking as if it existed solely for the partygoers’ enchantment, just another lovely accessory that would be packed up along with the rented glassware and returned at the end of the night.” At the same time, not all is glitz and glamour in the city. She also wonderfully writes about the squalor of LA and sees how from a distance (the Hollywood Hills) even this chaos can be “transformed into something twinkling and lovely and benign.”

For all its despair and bleakness, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe has its share of cutting humor. This is not a book that is all doom and gloom.

There are many cinematic scenes in here and Birdie even instructs Lewis to imagine that life is just a series of scenes—it makes the disappointment more bearable, she says. In a movie she watches, Birdie describes the end “as it always is, a road leading into the unseen distance, implying both hope and hopelessness.” The same ending applies to Hollowell’s wonderful novel.

Told in brief chapters with absolutely readable, edgy prose, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe is a novel that deserves a wide audience. A character in the novel defines the word “lovely” as “beauty with a dimension of grace.” By that very definition, Jenny Hollowell’s novel is very, very lovely indeed.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Holt Paperbacks; First Edition edition (June 8, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poormina Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jenny Hollowell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and Q&A
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another to try: Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

Bibliography:

• Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (June 2010)

“Good stories. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? That’s why we’re doing this.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (SEP 12, 2010)

Elizabeth Brundage’s third novel A Stranger Like You is her darkest to date. Her first novel The Doctor’s Wife is a tale of a woman married to a doctor who works a women’s clinic and performs abortions. The couple runs foul of anti-abortion activists in this tale which examines marital obligations against the backdrop of larger social issues. Someone Else’s Daughter is set in an exclusive school for the children of the wealthy, but when the protected, elite environment is breeched, various ugly realities seep in. A Stranger Like You is a post-9-11 tale: unrelentingly bleak and merciless in its examination of a decaying society of damaged people.

The novel begins with Hugh Waters, a man who walks out of his life in upstate New York to seek vengeance against Hedda Chase, the Gladiator Film studio executive who rejected his screenplay due to its violence and its implausibility. Hugh kidnaps the woman, and in a bizarre reenactment of the rejected screenplay, he stuffs Hedda in the boot of her car, drives the car to the airport, and dumps it there. The novel follows several threads going back and forth in time through its various characters. One plot line follows Hugh’s actions post kidnapping while another thread picks up what happens to Hedda. Another subplot involves Danny, a damaged Iraqi war veteran and a homeless girl named Daisy. All these characters are set in a collision course of violence through a trick of fate.

Given the plot, the novel is arguably a thriller, but since this isn’t a novel about a bank heist or an international conspiracy, we are left with a story of a crime and what led up to it. This lands us in character-driven territory. Part of the difficulty with the novel is that all the characters are extremely unappealing. That isn’t usually a problem as nasty people tend to spice up the action. But in A Stranger Like You, the characters never get beyond cliché. Even Hedda, the so-called victim and the most developed character in the novel is the abrasive and bitchy Hollywood executive who at one point tells Hugh “you’ll never work in this town.” Danny, the damaged veteran is a bother at home to his aunt who would have preferred he’d died a hero in Iraq so that at least she has bragging rights with her neighbours. Then there’s a young Iraqi woman, an exchange student, who wants to tell her story no matter the price. PTSD, homeless children, and Iraqi women who are appalled at their culture’s treatment of women are all very real, but the characters do not develop beyond labels. Part of the problem is that there is simply too much going on here.

The novel is at its best when exploring Hedda’s relationship to her part-time beau, Tom. Their relationship underscores the novel’s theme of exploitation and is balanced by Hugh’s marriage–yet another relationship based on exploitation. Hugh’s rare tenderness is directed to the have-nots of society while his violence & alienation which seems to be partly emanating from suppressed homosexuality is directed to everyone else. Another issue undeniably connected to the theme of exploitation is violence. Hedda finds it increasingly difficult to work for Gladiator films–a thrill factory of machismo and cheap thuggery, and yet the book dissolves down to the very elements it seems to argue against.

In Brundage’s other two novels (which I enjoyed very much, by the way), the characters are well-developed and entirely believable. They have full lives and multiple relationships while they struggle to cope with hostile social situations. In A Stranger Like You, the social dictates of the characters (their place in time) holds sway, and they seem created just for the moment. Yes they have pasts and they may, in some cases have futures, but in the novel they are cardboard cut-outs moved in rather like chess pieces to support the plot.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 31 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (August 5, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Elizabeth Brundage
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:Somebody Else’s Daughter The Doctor’s Wife Our interview with Elizabeth Brundage

Bibliography:

• The Doctor’s Wife (2004)
• Somebody Else’s Daughter (July 2008)
• A Stranger Like You (August 2010)

“All along, Paul had agreed that he wouldn’t keep working like this. He was agreeing still. The when just got pushed further ahead. I kept asking for and receiving my future promise, which I carried around in my pocket. Now I felt like a bill collector.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (SEP 12, 2010)

Mona Simpson’s book, My Hollywood, explores the relationship of mothers, children and nannies in southern California, most particularly in Santa Monica. The novel is told from two vantage points, the first one Claire, a mother in her 30’s with a 2 1/2 year old son, William. The other vantage point is Lola’s, the Filipina nanny who works as a live-in nanny for Claire and her husband Paul during the week when she takes care of  “Williamo.”  Lola also has a second job on the weekends, taking care of the son of a friend of Claire and Paul’s.

The novel opens with a conversation between Paul and Claire as they explore their unmarried relationship and whether they should they take it further. Both agree that a 50-50 responsibility for children and home is a must if they choose to marry and pursue their careers. Claire is a composer and Paul writes for comedy television. They use the $37,000 that Claire won from a Guggenheim grant to move to California. Once there, things change enormously from the decisions they had agreed upon prior to marriage.  Paul is rarely home. He goes to work at 8:30 a.m., needing his space before and during breakfast, and he rarely returns before midnight. He is always afraid that his contract will not be renewed even when he has his own sitcom show. Claire composes music in a dingy room that is hot and lacks air conditioning. She is not feeling productive. In fact, she is angry about the obvious lack of balance in her marriage. She tries to talk to Paul about the inequities and though he agrees, he keeps putting off a time when he can change. Claire complains to a friend of hers. She is sick of eating dinner with the nanny and her two-year old. Her friend tells her that if she gets divorced she will still be eating dinner with a two year-old and perhaps not have a nanny.

The book repeats the same information several times. It is also relatively unfocused, especially during the first half. The second half focuses more on the protagonists’ thoughts and inner lives and becomes somewhat more centered. However, this was not enough to revive my interest.

The real star of this book is Lola. She is the queen of the nannies, respected and looked up to by the other nannies.  She trains nannies for their jobs, mentors them, and conveys the  rules that she expects nannies to live by. One rule  is that nannies should not eat with their employers. Another is that they should not take give-aways until their employer insists several times. There are pages of rules to live by.

There is a continual conflict between the loyalty that nannies feel towards their families and charges and the money that they expect to be paid. At one point, Lola is offered a much better paying job by her weekend family who are trying to steal her from Paul and Claire. Lola figures out the amount of money she’ll be losing over a ten-year period if she stays at her current job, and it is over $70,000. However, Lola chooses to stay with her current employers because she loves “Williamo.”  The nannies are also competitive about who works in the nicest home. Lola is not in the forefront here because Paul and Claire rent a place that is relatively small.

Lola’s own children are in the Philippines and she grows closer to “Williamo” than she is to them. She has been in the U.S. for over six years and at one point she finds out that her husband has been unfaithful. She decides to remain in the U.S. because this is her only way of sending back thousands of dollars a year to her family, money that pays for her children’s education.

It is never clear in this book what drew Claire and Paul together. Claire doesn’t seem attracted to Paul at all and there is no real romantic love between them. Why they married is a mystery. The book has several gaps like this mixed with parts that are told to the reader so many times that I’ve memorized passages. I loved Mona Simpson’s previous novel Anywhere But Here and was thoroughly looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, My Hollywood disappoints because the characters’ voices don’t ring true and the content of the novel meanders and is unfocused.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (August 3, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mona Simpson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More insight into the domestic help: The Help by Kathryn Stockett The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss And our review of: Casebook

Bibliography:

• Anywhere But Here (1986)
• The Lost Father (1992)
• A Regular Guy (1996)
• Off Keck Road (2001)
• My Hollywood (2010)
• Casebook (Apri 2014)

“What Potts hated mainly, though, was that you were forced to pretend people knew what they were doing when they clearly didn’t. You look out the window at the faces hurtling past and they give you no reason for hope. Whizzing past goes a collection of drunks, hormonal teenagers, housewives fighting with their kids, hypertense execs screaming into cell phones, the ancient, the half blind, the losers with no reason to keep living, the sleep deprived but amphetamine-amped truck drivers swinging a gazillion-tonned rig of toilet supplies. Faces out of some goddamned horror movie. One false move and everybody dies.” 

Book Review:

Reviewed by Guy Savage (MAY 02, 2009)

Loser’s Town is the first novel from Daniel Depp and the first in a series of David Spandau mysteries. Now I am going to get the nauseating stuff over with first: yes, Daniel DEPP is the half brother of Johnny Depp, and according to some internet sites, there are some unpleasant assumptions that having a famous sibling carries clout in the publishing world. When it comes to carving out accomplishments in the world, it must be a pain in the arse to have a phenomenally famous sibling.

Daniel Depp is a producer and screenwriter. Don’t ask me what he’s done because I have no idea, so let’s talk about the novel, Loser’s Town, which has a terrific sense of place. Depp seems to know Hollywood, and Loser’s Town is at its dingy best when the author tackles the sordid underbelly of those stinking rich celebrities and their decadent lifestyles.

The novel begins with two bizarre, none-too-bright characters named Potts and Squiers driving to an address on Wonderland Avenue. For anyone who knows anything about Hollywood, the destination is enough to give you chills, and of course, the novel does not disappoint on this score. As Potts and Squiers drive to Wonderland Avenue, we sense that their mysterious mission has some connection with an ugly crime, and a feeling of dread builds. The author cleverly manages to blend the build-up with a subtle black sense of humour as a hostile, surreal conversation between Potts and Squiers takes place:

“Squiers saying that word, perished, really irritated the hell out of Potts. He was lying, he’d heard it somewhere on the news, and the newscaster had said perished. Squiers didn’t even know what it meant, where the hell would he get off using a word like that. Potts decided to nail him on it.”

With a very strong beginning, the novel then introduces David Spandau, the novel’s protagonist. Spandau is a former stunt man, and depending on who you talk to, Spandau is either a has-been or smart enough to get out of the stunt biz and morph into a private detective. Spandau works for Coren Investigations, an agency that specializes in protecting the glittering lives of annoying celebrities. In Loser’s Town, Spandau is contacted by a particularly petulant star, Bobby Dye, who’s about to break into superstar status with his latest film.

Bobby Dye is an impossible client. He’s temperamental, egotistical, and what’s more important, he’s being blackmailed, and this is where Spandau fits in….

Loser’s Town is at its best when describing the tawdriness of Hollywood. Here Hollywood is presented as the Tinsel Town with cheap glitter covering some rather ugly, vicious people–people whose values gravitate around the clothes they wear and who they sleep with. There are some great characters here–including Pookie, the agency’s secretary who “believed in spiritual redemption through clothing.” Since this is the first in a series of detective novels, the narrative also includes details about Spandau’s personal life. This brings us to Spandau’s ex-wife Dee and the horse ranch. These parts of the novel are the weakest sections even though they may act as a balance–an antidote if you prefer–to the nasty side of Hollywood. Somehow these sections did not seem so authentic and jarred with the novel’s overall atmosphere. Just think of the contrast as hanging out in a strip joint all day and then popping into Disneyland for lunch and you will get the idea. Give me the lowlifes in the Voodoo Lounge anytime. Still, in spite of this minor flaw, I think noir fans have a new name to look for: Daniel Depp and his Spandau series.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 31 reviewers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (March 3, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE:	Loser’s Town : A David Spandau Novel
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Daniel Depp
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	no

Bibliography:

• Loser’s Town
• Babylon Night (August 2010)