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KILLING PAPARAZZI
by Robert M. Eversz
St. Martin's Minotaur, January 2002
310 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0312289022


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Mary Alice Baker has just been released from prison after serving a term of 4 years for blowing up one of the terminals at LAX. Nina Zero, as she prefers to be known, goes to a local diner, after meeting with her parole officer, to meet the man she has agreed to marry. He's also a photographer, but he needs an American wife in order to be able to stay in the US. Nna and Gabriel Burns drive to Las Vegas to marry. They are attacked by a strange jogger but Nina fights him off.

On their return to Los Angeles, Gabe and Nina go their separate ways, vaguely crossing paths at least once more before Gabriel is found murdered, in a body of water. Nina feels as though she owes it to him to find his murderer, despite the attempts of the police to intimidate her. When another paparzzo is killed, the police get really interested, especially after her apartmebnt is trashed. A prostitute known to her is found dead in a car trunk after having made an appointment to meet Nina, and the police are sure she's guilty

It's impossible to get the flavor of this book from a short review. It's sort of a send-up of the hard boiled / noir genre...the hero is a young woman, who has all the attributes of a Mike Hammer: She's smart, has a sharp tongue, and can beat up anyone, usually. The prose gets kind of purple every once in a while, just as in the best of the noir tales, but then there's a kicker. "A mountain range ripped through Los Angeles like a spine and despite the steady encroachment of civilization the hills remained wild with coyotes and owls, which feasted on neing cats and small dogs as often as jackrabbits." And yes, British usage and spelling are used throughout, which is only proper since the book was first published in the UK.

Eversz verges on satire but always manages to pull back before he goes too far, which is hard to do since Los Angeles IS a satire. He manges to delineate some outrageous characters without caricaturing them. Mr. Eversz lives in Prague. Perhaps that is why he can visit Los Angeles with gentle humor.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2001

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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