BLUR

A burnt-out entertainment writer stumbles into the path of a burnt-out murderess. Possibly.

In a self-consciously full-length noir debut that’s more gris than noir, Canadian short-story writer Berry throws yet another embittered writer up against yet another ambiguous murder in—you guessed it—Hollywood. Bruce Dermott, divorced father of two, lapsed real-estate agent, gloomy staff reporter at a minor entertainment rag, having pushed the deadlines on an overdue rock-band piece well beyond the limits of his editor’s patience, thinks he has stumbled on the story that will at last move his name up into the ranks of, say, John Tesh and Dominick Dunne. He has spotted a woman he believes to be Emma Fine, the silver-screen sex goddess who vanished ten years earlier after beating the rap for the death of her married boyfriend, Ted Weaver. Handsome Canadian (Canadians figure heavily here) construction worker Weaver was brutally bonked and dumped to drown in Emma Fine’s swimming pool the morning after he and Emma were to have left on a camping trip. Adding to the mystery, Weaver’s wife is also missing, and her car is blood-splashed. Thanks to lots of cop-mangled evidence, prime suspect Emma, who turned up bruised and stupendously drugged days later, was cleared of the charge. Flashbacks aplenty fill the reader in on Emma’s spectacularly sordid past, Weaver’s tragic past, his wife Bridget’s horrible past, Bruce’s slovenly past, Bruce’s son’s possible gay future, Emma’s chauffeur’s secret longings, and some fairly serious plastic surgery that will bear heavily on the re-heated case. Amid revelations of a stupendously inept conspiracy to usurp the life and fortune of Emma Fine, the reader is left guessing, albeit casually, to the end just who was pissed enough at Weaver to do it and sober enough to find something sufficiently sturdy to knock him senseless. A semi-touching reunion between Weaver and his wife somehow seems consciously written for a best supporting actress.

Pretentious, but sure to be greenlighted.