A vulgar, sex-filled romp—in the best sense: good, nasty fun.
Television writer/producer Bochco (L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, etc.) draws on his Hollywood experience to write a knowing first novel about a screenwriter on the downward slope who witnesses a murder—and gets the break of his career.
Mid-level agent Eddie Jelko narrates with a seedy eye for depravity the story of his client Bobby Newman, a screenwriter of some success inexplicably stalled on a couple of projects. On the same day that Eddie tells him to screw off, Bobby (who could charitably be described as lacking social skills) finds out that his wife Vee, a struggling actress, has been sleeping with a producer for whom her husband has just been hired to do a rewrite. Vee moves out, and that night, scanning windows with a powerful telescope as is his wont, Bobby catches another married actress, Linda Paulson, briskly committing infidelity with an acting teacher named Ramon, then killing him with an award statue. Being an imaginatively amoral sort, and spotting the premise for a screenplay, Bobby dashes down to the apartment and retrieves Ramon’s little black book (which reveals that Bobby’s wife was one of his conquests), a videotape the dead man was secretly making of his tryst with Linda, and another video of Ramon with Vee. Inspired by this sordid little event, Bobby starts pounding out a screenplay that looks as if it’ll have him back on top of the Hollywood heap in no time at all. His love life also improves after he strikes up a relationship with the murderess. Complicating the happy story is detective Dennis Farentino, who starts nosing around in Bobby’s affairs and develops an interest in Vee. Bochco has a real talent for pulp melodrama, mixing in plenty of dirty jokes, insider industry riffs, and even a few shameless references to one of his earliest shows, Columbo.
A vulgar, sex-filled romp—in the best sense: good, nasty fun.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-6156-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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