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Calab Rush, aka Crush, is a bouncer at a Hollywood nightclub who reads Marcus Aurelius in his spare time. His background is sketchy, to say the least. Beginning as the son of a Russian Mafioso and running cons throughout his childhood, he has found salvation through AA and his sensei Catherine Gail.
But he can't seem to escape his half-sister, Rachel Fury, a con artist who hires him for protection. She is running a long con, so convoluted that I dare any reader to stare into its heart. Rachel has reinvented herself as a starlet who has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress but insists she needs protection from her stalker – the stalker every Hollywood actress needs to keep the paparazzi following her. In case they can't find her she has an app on her phone that updates her location every two hours. This of course comes in handy at one of the many turning points in HOLLYWOOD AND VINE, on an Oscar night of course.
Crush is a loveable hunk with a heart of gold, blundering though a maze of plots, all a bit reminiscent of old Hollywood movies. As he unravels one plot, he stumbles into another, and another. Meanwhile the dialogue is witty in a movie sort of way, but a very deep and dark cynicism hangs over it all. This is a Hollywood that knows the ugliness of America, represented by figures like Donald Trump, and is powerless to unmask it to its audience. This is a Hollywood stuck making superhero movies directed by sociopaths like Adam Udall, one of the villains of HOLLYWOOD AND VINE.
Witty, cleverly plotted, dripping with Hollywood allusions, this nauseating noir fiction will delight the reader – it is so much fun – but like bad sex, or a bad movie, for that matter, the reader will need a good hot shower to feel clean again.
§ Susan Hoover is a playwright, independent producer and retired college English teacher. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Reviewed by Susan Hoover, October 2016
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