( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Sep 15 2008
The author writes from an insider's view of Hollywood. We've all heard the stories about the"sharks" of movie land. They are all here: the evil producer that's walked over everybody on his way to the top. He throws a party, inviting all his enemies to gloat, and is found murdered the next day. The writing in this one is smooth and flowing. Once I started, I was hooked until I finished. Enjoyed it so well, I immediately ordered the sequel, Blonde Lightning. If you like a good mystery written with a deft touch, one can't go wrong with this one.
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( 0 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 8 2005
Billed as a Hollywood crime novel depicting the dark heart of the movie business, Earthquake Weather falls far short. Mike Hayes, the protoganist, is a creative executive in Hollywood who can be moral, heroic, cynical, ambitious, driven, lazy, weak, confused, single-miinded, humorous and a variety of other contradictory things depending on which of the almost 60 short chapters one is reading in this book. As a character this may make Mike human, unfortunately as a narrator it only confuses the reader. The book's secondary cast is a set of boiler-plate characters - a movie mogul tyrant, hedonistic room-mate, beautiful starlet turned crack-whore, street rappin' gang members, a pair of Joe Friday type homocide detectives and world weary yet enigmatic screen writers - who inexplicably show up and disappear. To spice things up there is some contrived tension with a maniacal rattlesnake, the return from the dead of a saloon owner and a couple of stand-offs with our hero and LA gang members. If this is sounding a little like something Raymond Chandler might write - well he's in here too, although why is unclear. The "mystery" involves the death of the movie mogul, (Mike's boss), who is murdered about a third of the way into the book and is solved by Mike, when "everything clicks", about ten pages from the ending. No clues, no pursuit of suspects - just the murder and then the identification of the murderer. The book contains dozens of vignettes, some humorous and some well written but at least in my mind it doesn't hold together as a story, a mystery or a novel.
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( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 8 2005
Billed as a Hollywood crime novel depicting the dark heart of the movie business, Earthquake Weather falls far short. Mike Hayes, the protoganist, is a creative executive in Hollywood who can be moral, heroic, cynical, ambitious, driven, lazy, weak, confused, single-miinded, humorous and a variety of other contradictory things depending on which of the almost 60 short chapters one is reading in this book. As a character this may make Mike human, unfortunately as a narrator it only confuses the reader. The book's secondary cast is a set of boiler-plate characters - a movie mogul tyrant, Mike's hedonistic room-mate, a beautiful starlet turned crack-whore, street rappin' gang members, a pair of Joe Friday type homocide detectives and world weary yet enigmatic screen writers - who inexplicably show up and disappear. To spice things up there is some contrived tension with a maniacal rattlesnake, the return from the dead of a saloon owner and a couple of stand-offs with our hero and LA gang members. If this is all sounding a little like something Raymond Chandler might have written - well he's in here too, although why is unclear. The "mystery" involves the death of the movie mogul, (Mike's boss), who is murdered about a third of the way into the book and is solved by Mike, when "everything clicks", about ten pages from the ending. No clues, no pursuit of suspects - just the murder and then the identification of the murderer. The book contains dozens of vignettes, some humorous and some well written but at least in my mind it doesn't hold together as a story, a mystery or a novel.
