|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Jim McNamara is a PI with a difference. Yes, he has -- or had -- the obligatory drink and drugs problem, but he's ironed those out and his beat is the music world. And his client in DEADER THAN DISCO is Angel, a trashy pop star with an ego the size of California and ideas way above her station. Jim's called in when a basketball star is found dead in Angel's Los Angeles mansion and the star accused of his murder. She won't help herself, though, and won't even deign to talk to Jim about what happened. There's a cast of characters around her who might be described as picaresque, and Jim has his work cut out trying to extract any commonsense from them. And when Angel goes on the run, he has to find her. Meanwhile, Jim has to keep his own demons in check by attending AA meetings in every town, and he has a guy he's sponsoring to keep a beady eye on who will insist on going AWOL at inconvenient moments. DEADER THAN DISCO is interspersed with dialogue that crackles and a great supporting cast. My favourite was Oops, the man mountain so named for having dropped a stalker over a balcony. Half the fun of the book is wondering just how many of the cast are actually based on real people. Angel sounds, erm, familiar, to put it mildly . . . Quite some years at the top, an Italian-Catholic background, a raunchy on-stage persona, an even more raunchy coffee table book, and a relationship with a British film director. Get the picture? I loved Hiltbrand's first outing, KILLER SOLO, and wasn't disappointed with this one. The author's been a rock hack, and you just know a good few of the anecdotes here have to be based on fact. The ending verges on the cartoonish and slapstick, and there's not really a great deal of menace present in the book, but hey, who cares. Hiltbrand's obviously having a ball, and so did I.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, April 2005
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
