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When Natalie Conway gets a call from her former editor asking her to cover the Cannes Film Festival, she is reluctant to do it. Even though she’s a veteran film critic and industry journalist, she’s avoided the world’s premiere film fest for 25 years because she’s haunted by her past. When she was very young, both she and her mother, an actress, were struck by lightening as they picnicked in the French Alps. Natalie survived the accident, but her mother didn’t. After her mother’s death, Natalie was sent to Arizona to live with her father, a man she’d never heard of before the accident, and she’s never returned to the country of her birth. She agrees to make the trip this time because the editor offers her a lot of money, money she desperately needs to keep up the house payments on her home in Laurel Canyon. Once she arrives in France, she’s tempted to find her mother’s lover, Claudel, the man who cared for her in the days after her mother’s death. She can’t bring herself to dredge up all those memories by confronting him directly, so settles on leaving him a telephone message. Ultimately, he joins her in Cannes, but not before she meets a reclusive producer who has been avoiding her. She suspects the producer knows something about her mother’s death and she pursues him until she begins to unravel some of the secrets of her childhood. Veteran film critic and celebrity interviewer Sara Voorhees has written a debut mystery set on familiar turf. The insider detail that Voorhees brings to the pressrooms and celebrities that populate this book give it a fresh and authentic feel that’s sure to captivate any film buffs. She captures not just the glamour, but also the exhaustion of watching a marathon schedule of movies while at the same time shoe-horning in interviews with their stars and directors. While the movie stuff is fascinating, and the narrator’s voice is smooth and witty enough to keep the pages turning, Natalie’s personal life is another matter. Almost everything that happens here is so completely implausible that it’s hard to keep reading. There are several deeply creepy (and not in a good way) threads that ruined the cinematic romp for me. If you can overlook those, you’ll probably enjoy the jaunty trip behind the scenes at Cannes.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, October 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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