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 wunderkindwho’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
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.
Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband.
The evidence against Lucinda Sanz was so overwhelming that she followed the advice of Frank Silver, the B-grade attorney who’d elbowed his way onto her defense, and pleaded no contest to manslaughter to avoid a life sentence for shooting Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Roberto Sanz in the back as he stalked out of her yard after their latest argument. But now that her son, Eric, is 13, old enough to get recruited by local gangs, she wants to be out of stir and at his side. So she writes to Mickey Haller, who asks his half-brother for help. After all his years working for the LAPD, Bosch is adamant about not working for a criminal defendant, even though Haller’s already taken him on as an associate so that he can get access to private health insurance and a UCLA medical trial for an experimental cancer treatment. But the habeas corpus hearing Haller’s aiming for isn’t, strictly speaking, a criminal defense proceeding, and even a cursory examination of the forensic evidence raises Bosch’s hackles. Bolstered by Bosch’s discoveries and a state-of-the-art digital reconstruction of the shooting, Haller heads to court to face Assistant Attorney General Hayden Morris, who has a few tricks up his own sleeve. The endlessly resourceful courtroom back-and-forth is furious in its intensity, although Haller eventually upstages Bosch, Morris, and everyone else in sight. What really stands out here, however, is that Connelly never lets you forget, from his title onward, the life-or-death issues behind every move in the game.
The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780316563765
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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