Death of a Blue Movie Star

Bill Farley, the owner of my favorite bookshop, made me read this book because of the main character. Rune (and that's all the name she has) is a character you won't soon forget. She's delicious. A little bit street person, a little bit sophisticate, a little bit waif, a little bit in total control. She's amazing. She's trying to break into the film business and in the process collects dangerous evidence with her video camera. There is one other Rune book and I'm saving it for a special occasion.

Very readable, with lots of Deaver's plot twists and turns. This is set in the early 1980s and felt very dated. However Rune is an interesting character. It's quite gruesome in places and the plot holds together well. The problem is that terrible things happen to some of the characters along the way, and I'm not sure that I cared.

I enjoyed the book but the formatting in the Kindle format was not great. The story was very good, loved the main character, Rune. She's young, fearless, hungry and funny. Read this one first but will definitely go back and read the first book in this series. I love Jeffery Deaver and while he has grown as an author this was still a really good story even though it was one of his first efforts.

Death of a Blue Movie Star was originally published in 1990 by Jeffery Deaver and reflects the New York of the time. At this time was the beginning of the gentrification of New York and especially Manhattan and Time Square still had a seedy side.

Rune is struggling to make it as a film maker in New York she has got a job at an agency that does commercials and documentaries, and she was the runner and general dogsbody. But on the positive side they did let her use the equipment in her spare time. When a bomb goes off not long after she has passed a porn movie theatre, she has her camera out and is filming.

The poster outside the theatre was a picture of the porn actress Shelly Lowe and there was something about the actress that made Rune show more want to investigate further. At the same time, she meets NYPD bomb squad detective Sam Healy, and she is constantly asking him questions and he eventually allows her to do some filming. When Shelly Lowe was killed in front of Rune by another bomb she decides to make a documentary about Lowe.

As the Sword of Jesus keep up their bombing campaign, they become more pronounced with their targets. They thought of themselves to be the providers of relief from the sinful porn industry.

Rune plunges head long into the investigation and does not think or worry about the consequences. As the body count mounts up Deaver sprinkles around the clues for the reader to pick up on. show less

Death of a Blue Movie Star is the second book in Jeffrey Deaver’s Rune series. Rune is living on a houseboat and working at becoming a film-maker. Following bomb attacks on adult theatres and studios, she decides to make a documentary about the life of a blue movie star. As usual, she gets involved in far more than she intends, including porn stars, the NYPD bomb squad, religious fanatics and leathergoods ads. Rune’s naiveté is truly entertaining. With an excellent plot twist at the end, this a great read

From Publishers Weekly When a porno movie theater is blown up in Times Square, 21-year-old film production assistant Rune (no last name given) decides that this is the chance to realize her dream of making her own film. Using the bombing as a hook for a documentary on pornography, she interviews Shelly Lowe, a major porn star. Rune is just getting into the film when another explosion kills Shelly. Evidence points to a religious cult, but Rune teams up with a quirky bomb squad detective, Sam Healy, to discover the real murderer. Since Rune's method of operation is unorthodox (including breaking into offices and buying false IDs), Sam extricates her from some bizarre predicaments and then becomes her lover. Rune's pursuit of the killer show more takes her behind the scenes of legitimate theater and into the seamy world of pornography. She is an offbeat heroine with a mixture of spunk and naivete. Deaver (Manhattan Is My Beat) writes compellingly about New York 's sordid side, but his portrayal of Shelly as a gifted actress and aspiring playwright is hard to credit. Still, his fast-paced whodunit is saved by surprising twists near the end. show less