This beast gave me a nasty headache, because I'm already seeing places where it needs changes, so I'm just stealing a cool review of "The Lyons' Den" from JP at Salmagundi. Sometimes he's NSFW, but his book reviews are fun to read.
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Previous to "Fraud", I was reading my friend Kyle Michel Sullivan's latest, "The Lyon's Den." Daniel Bettancourt is a writer of noir whose characters talk to him. I have no problem with this. As I tend to tell people, friends, complete strangers: I have my most intelligent conversations when I am alone. What makes Daniel crazy is the same thing that potentially makes me crazy: our ex's. In Daniel's case, Theordore J. Bentley III, a.k.a. Tad, who has come for Daniel's help. Tad is trying to turn scripts based on Daniel's work into FAME and he's come to Daniel because some other writer (the Cheeto-eater) has fucked it up. Thus, Daniel is sent off into the wintery night to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to fix the scripts.
In the process he's put in his place by a grouchy, big-mama-truck-driving gnome named Mrs. Serff, attacked by a gun-toting heavy, seduced by a "journalist" who happens to have a SOB holster, and threatened with an icy death by a Baby Fenster. It isn't a pleasant stay.
But the book is fun. Told from the perspective of Ace Shostakovich, Daniel's main character, the narration is all hard-boiled, PI swagger, and asides of Daniel's life, history, mental processes, breakdowns, and dreams. Add in Daniel's dream version of Tad and Ace's motor-revving honey, Carmen, and before you know it, you'll wondering if anyone in this piece is for real.
I'm told by the author that is probably his lightest book - light here being not a judgement of weight rather one of timbre. Also with it being based on two versions of the same play, it comes off as a play - particularly the great majority of the book that takes place in the cabin. It becomes quite easy to imagine the book as scenes in a play with an audience sitting and watching. Or as I kept doing, imagine Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in Deathtrap, but, you know, funnier.
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In the process he's put in his place by a grouchy, big-mama-truck-driving gnome named Mrs. Serff, attacked by a gun-toting heavy, seduced by a "journalist" who happens to have a SOB holster, and threatened with an icy death by a Baby Fenster. It isn't a pleasant stay.
But the book is fun. Told from the perspective of Ace Shostakovich, Daniel's main character, the narration is all hard-boiled, PI swagger, and asides of Daniel's life, history, mental processes, breakdowns, and dreams. Add in Daniel's dream version of Tad and Ace's motor-revving honey, Carmen, and before you know it, you'll wondering if anyone in this piece is for real.
I'm told by the author that is probably his lightest book - light here being not a judgement of weight rather one of timbre. Also with it being based on two versions of the same play, it comes off as a play - particularly the great majority of the book that takes place in the cabin. It becomes quite easy to imagine the book as scenes in a play with an audience sitting and watching. Or as I kept doing, imagine Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in Deathtrap, but, you know, funnier.
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Thanks, JP. Glad you liked it.
Now where's my Advil?
Thanks, JP. Glad you liked it.
Now where's my Advil?
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