Death by Hollywood

Book on CD performed by Denis Franz

From the book jacket: One day, while spying on his Hollywood Hills neighbors through his telescope, Bobby Newman (a down-on-his luck screenwriter) sees a beautiful socialite making love to a handsome actor. When their pillow talk takes a turn for the ugly, Bobby watches in horror as the woman bludgeons her lover to death with his own acting trophy. Deciding to write about it inste4ad of reporting it to the cops, Bobby insinuates himself in Detective Dennis Farentino’s murder investigation. Before long, Bobby has dragged the detective, his estranged wife, his lover, and his agent into a Hollywood funhouse hall of mirrors, where only the most manipulative player will survive.

My reactions:
Bochco is, show more himself, a famous television writer, and it shows in this novel. The scenes are quite visual and action packed. And much of the plot is revealed in dialogue. These are not complaints, because this style really helped the audio performance shine.

The story is narrated by one of the side characters – agent Eddie Jelko. And the reader will have to trust that he knows all that happened with the other characters, because mostly he wasn’t present. Whatever. There are numerous twists and turns and complications that keep me interested and engaged. And I love an ambiguous ending!

Denis Franz does a great job of performing the audio version. I remember him from his days as Lt Buntz on Bochco’s hit TV series Hill Street Blues. show less

I won't read a more entertaining book this year, that's for sure. This whipped along at pace, and had me laughing out loud at the cynical observations on people and life in general, although the author couldn't seem to resist fitting in an old joke about every ten pages for laughs. It was almost like he had a formula, where if he hadn't struck a laugh after a certain point, then stick in an oldy but goody. Still, it was one of the few books where I couldn't sense or guess the outcome, where the characters and plot took some surprising twists and where "I found myself putting the book down to make it last longer." And its the first book I can say that cliché about in literally years. Therefore ten out of ten.

The story I want to tell you involves, among other things, a screenwriter whose career is fading out more than it's fading in, a billionaire's wife, and a murder - which means, of course, there's also a cop.

Steven Bochco, creator of "Hill Street Blues", "LA Law" and "NYPD Blue", is a Hollywood insider and has written an extremely entertaining murder story with a twist in its tail.

Narrated by an agent, it is the story of a murder of an actor and its aftermath. One of the agent's clients, screenwriter Bobby Newman, is spying on his neighbours through a telescope when he sees the murder being committed, but rather than calling 911 to report it, he decides to use it as the basis of a new screenplay.

Eddie Jelko is an agent in Hollywood representing many different talented people but he feels that his time representing screenwriter Bobby Newman has come to an end. Bobby used to be a sought-after writer but too much booze has turned Bobby into a hack who can't write a grocery list these days. The night that Bobby's wife Vee finally walks out on their marriage Bobby spends a drunken evening looking through his telescope peeping on his neighbors in the affluent Hollywood Hills. What he sees is a couple having a romantic evening which soon turns to a physical confrontation where the woman strikes the man with a statuette, killing him. At first Bobby thinks he should reach for the phone and report the murder but on second thought - this show more could be a great screenplay. Bobby inserts himself into the investigation, befriending the lead detective and beginning a romantic liaison with the murderess herself. The screenplay is Bobby's best work in decades and he begins to manipulate the real life characters to fit his writing.

The essential idea for this book was quite clever and it is told from the perspective of Eddie Jelko who slowly realizes just what is going on with Bobby. However, this is one of the sleaziest books I've ever read, and while I'm not naïve enough to think that Hollywood is not the sweetest place on earth, I hate to think that it is really this bad. Bochco is an insider in the Hollywood community having written several mega-hit tv shows (NYPD Blue, LA Law, and Hill Street Blues) so he has a lot of material to draw from. The mystery itself was fine; all of the added Hollywood "wink-wink" stories were disgusting. Skip this one. show less

I've enjoyed Bochco's television series for years -- groundbreaking hits like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser M.D., Hooperman, and Murder One (though I never got into NYPD Blue). Before he became one of the 1980s and 1990s' most influential producers, I'd enjoyed his writing for 1970s cop shows, too -- his Columbo plots were some of the most intricate that series every produced. Do, with that kind of writing pedigree, I looked forward to reading this, his first novel. I'll have to admit, I was kind of disappointed. As a mystery/thriller, this novel sort of fits into the "Columbo" mold -- we (the reader) know who did everything, and the fun of the plot is to see if the "sleuth" characters can figure it out. Unfortunately, this show more process isn't really all that enjoyable, because the characters are distinctly unlikeable. Bochco pokes a lot of fun at the foibles and idiocies of the entertainment industry, and on that level, I'd recommend this one as an indictment of that world. However, as a mystery novel this one is merely lukewarm. I'd also caution those that find offensive language to be one of your barometers of readability -- this one is rife with four-letter words...and unnecessarily so, in my opinion. If you'd still like to pursue this one, here's the plot in a nutshell: Two-time loser screenwriter with writer's block witnesses a murder through a telescope, but instead of calling it in, he decides to position of inside knowledge to write a screenplay about what he saw, insinuating himself into the lives of the guilty parties and the cops investigating the crime. Several double- and triple-crosses later, his agent (who narrates the story) tumbles to an even bigger secret when the script sees the light of day.

Originally reviewed for my local library's website: http://www.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/bookguide/srec/staffrec10-06.htm show less

Highly recommended by The Daily Mirror - so I should have known better. However, it only took me a couple of hours to steam through this predictable, poorly constructed novel. I'll put my time to better use in the future.

There are some good ideas in here, nuggets buried in dung. It's the execution that grates - the amatuerish writing style, the constant tangents, the coarse language; compared to "The Player", there's no heart to the story, and the characters are laughably one-dimensional.

Really fun in places but somehow ultimately unsatisfying