Joshua Dann

This 1997 book has not aged well. The hero is an ex-cop and everything he does comes out rather ok, no matter what stretches the author has to make to make it so. It's a quick read without much substance.

This is an old Hollywood nostalgia disguised as a science fiction. This work is very light on science and heavy on star powers. The uses of the time machine to get the characters out of dire situations are fairly predictable.

From Andy's Ancrhonisms

When a wealthy client goes missing in time, Timeshare Unlimited calls upon John Surrey, ex-LAPD and currently head of security for the time travel agency to rescue the client. John together with his wife Althea travel from 2007 to 1920's America where they embark on a cross-country mission to track down their target and return him to the present.

In Joshua Dann's second instalment in the Timeshare series he continues to flesh out the central characters he introduced show more readers to in his first novel, Timeshare, while entertaining the reader with a jaunt across 1926 America.

During John Surrey's cross-country search for the elusive Hollywood producer and Timeshare client Mitch Levitan, the author manages to include scenes with no less than nine celebrities (and in some cases yet-to-be celebrities). Names including Charles Lindbergh, Ronald Reagan, Al Capone, Bugs Moran, Bugsy Siegel, Cab Calloway, Edgar Hoover, Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table and Japanese Commander Yamamoto. With the exception of Dorothy Parker, few if any of the historical figures are central to the plot and at times it feels as if Dann has constructed scenes specifically to name-drop and is using Mitch Levitan as a plot device to string together the celebrity cameos.

All criticisms aside, I felt that Dann's writing shone it's brightest when he was dealing with his central characters and their connections to the past. Whether it was Mitch Levitan visiting his Uncle Harry Levitan as a young struggling writer or Terry Rapport visiting his grandparents as honest store-owners trying to get by. The celebrity name-dropping during the rest of the novel threatens to overwhelm the poignancy that Dann develops through these central characters during these few brief scenes.

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I was intrigued by the premise of this novel, a travel agency which sells vacations in time to wealthy clients. Tour guide John Surrey, an ex-LAPD cop, becomes the first man to travel in time. His first assignment is to test the age old paradox, can time travel alter history. His goal - get a bit part in a 1940’s Hollywood movie. If he shows up on film in present day, history can be changed. Surrey’s trip to 1940 Hollywood finds him socializing with John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, while show more being embroiled in World War II espionage with the likes of James Bond author Ian Fleming and spy William Stephenson (a.k.a. Intrepid). John also manages to find time to make side trips to visit Jim Morrison and the Doors at the Whiskey A Go-Go circa 1966, 1957 Hollywood and a 1978 Disco in Hermosa Beach California.

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