Let's All Kill Constance

On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writer in Venice, California, answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once-glamorous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge. She vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead, with Constance's name included among them.

And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken-down jalopy with his irascible sidekick Crumley to sift through the ashes of a bygone Hollywood, a graveyard of ghosts and secrets where each twisted road leads to grim show more shrines and shattered dreams and, often to death. show less

I tried very hard to like this book, but the meandering plot and overwrought emotionality made this a painful read. I greatly admire his early work. But since the 1980s, Bradbury's florid style that seemed so refreshing and genuine in his early masterpieces, has seemed to me to slip more deeply with each new book into a kind of syrupy sweet nostalgia - very difficult to stomach. I thought his previous forays into noir fiction (the excellent Death is a Lonely Business and the very good A Graveyard for Lunatics) were wonderful exceptions to the downward spiral of his work. The unnamed narrator in these novels articulated Bradbury's belief in the virtues of naivete and sweetness, but was offset by the dark overtones of the plot and show more surrounding characters. But in this book, I'm afraid the molasses of his prose has once again overwhelmed everything else. show less

It's a Ray Bradbury book, so that's about all that needs to be said to make it clear that it's exquisitely written. The word choice, the flow, the rhythm - it's all poetry. That's not to say this book will be for everyone. It's not science fiction - it's a name drop to ancient Hollywood in a way and the characters riffing back and forth remind me of the classic detective types in black and white movies. The story is a strange one, but the words carrying you on the journey are gems.

I sometimes think that Ray Bradbury is not, in fact, a multi-genre writer. That through his entire career, he has only written in one genre: a genre to be named “Bradbury.” I feel that way because no matter which genre he chooses to write in (are there any that he hasn’t?) his inimitable style is always dominant.

In “Let’s All Kill Constance,” this style is applied to a murder mystery set in 1960 in Hollywood. An older actress named Constance receives an old phone book, many names are crossed out, even some of people who are still alive. Then she disappears and bodies turn up. The unnamed narrator (who is possibly Bradbury himself) must find out what’s going on.

That’s the simple part. The special Ray Bradbury touch is show more that while the overall plot structure is purely genre murder mystery, all the dialog and all the scene setting is pure Bradbury. The people all talk like they’re slightly (or more than slightly) unhinged, and the scene descriptions are pure poetry (and as such, don’t always make the most sense).

Now, here’s a bit of heresy. I prefer Bradbury’s work in the short form. I loved “Illustrated Man” and “The Martian Chronicles,” but even at a brief 210 pages, I found it a bit wearing to read the dialog of all these crazy people. But that’s just me. If you’ve ever been curious to see what Bradbury might do to a standard mystery to make it completely his own, you should read this. show less

Not so much badly written, as ... oddly written. Everyone is talking too fast and making a shoehorned attempt at being relatable. I'm guessing the author could hear it in his head, but it comes off as forced and choppy to the reader.

Sunset Boulevard with unnecessary car chases and a Shyamalan twist. Still manages to feel less memorable, somehow.

Ultimately only picked it up to see what a sci-fi writer would do with the Mystery genre. Would have liked a more classic approach. Felt like he was trying to make a made-for-tv movie script and not really a murder mystery.

One of the master's lesser efforts; his skills seem to have eroded somewhat over the years. Constance Rattigan is an aging former star of the silver screen, who beseeches an unnamed writer (a Bradbury stand-in?) to help her as she runs in fear from the implications of two Books of the Tinseltown dead (and soon-to-be-dead) that have been anonymously delivered to her. Our unnamed hero enlists a few curmudgeonly sidekicks on his odyssey to track down the meaning of the names and to rescue Constance from a fate she seems to have resigned herself to. Some of Bradbury's laziest dialogue is here; all his characters speak in the same truncated speech that seems imbued with a symbolism that they all get, but the reader has been left to struggle. show more It was hard to keep my interest all the way through this one, and that's a rare and sad admission for a Bradbury fan to make. show less

The best strengths of the book lie within its ability to be satirical and completely outlandish while looking for all kinds of clues regarding who Constance really is and the mysterious deaths that have been taken place (a book with names and addresses, some of which are crossed out, appears in the beginning of the book, setting forth the remaining plot.) At it's height, it provides an excellent argument for the idea of escaping into various forms of people and characters, ultimately to escape yourself. At it's lowest, it's slightly above drivel. I think the book can be an exciting and engaging read but I'd much more highly recommend Bradbury's short stories any day of the week.