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BURNING GARBO
by Robert M. Eversz
Simon & Schuster, October 2003
271 pages
$23.00
ISBN: 0743250133


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I reviewed the first of the Nina Zero series, SHOOTING ELVIS, in December 2001, and the second, KILLING PAPARAZZI, in July 2003; these two books are good background for reading BURNING GARBO. Nina is really Mary Alice Baker, but after getting far over her head in crime in heartless L.A., she changes her name, and Zero shows what she thinks of herself.

In the second book, after getting out of prison on parole she marries, learns the Paparazzi trade, and becomes a widow. In the third, she's pursuing her vocation by trying to get salable photos of a famous aging Hollywood actress, who, like Garbo, wants to be alone. Things go wrong, as they usually do with Nina, and she's arrested for arson and murder. Released, but still under suspicion, she finds somewhat cooperative friends in the niece of the reclusive actress and a retired sheriff's deputy/distant relative who shelters the niece.

No matter what Nina does, however, she is always under suspicion and pursued by the police and her gruff, but not heartless parole officer. The so-called good guys are not the only ones after her, for Nina, in addition to being shot at, is pursued by unknown people who seem to want nothing less than her total destruction.

Her most reliable companion is a Rottweiler whose teeth have all been pulled out. Frank, her paparazzo editor shows, after first protecting his business interests, that he also is willing to be of assistance. So with the help of friends, the hindrance of the police, and the deadly pursuit of unknown killers, Nina goes through one exciting adventure after another, leading up to a grand denouement on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

The beauty of an Eversz story is that he has all the inventiveness of Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but is definitely not a copycat in either plot or writing style. His writing is as fresh as the occasional sea breezes that come to clear out the smog of L.A. Adequately descriptive to bathe the reader in the ambience of L.A., his prose eschews needless language and whips along with some of the fastest scenes I've read in a long time. In Nina he has come up with a character who engages our interest with all the appeal of a precocious Parisian street gamin combined with an ability to grow as she profits in understanding the ways of a wicked world.

At the end of my review of KILLING PAPARAZZI, I mentioned that I wouldn't be surprised if Eversz got a real-life TV offer, and I understand now that Hollywood has bought the rights to SHOOTING ELVIS with an intention of having Thora Birch play the part of Nina. Although I couldn't have predicted anyone specific in the role, the prediction itself was easy. The filmability of Nina Zero is as obvious as a well-hit baseball on its way to becoming a homerun.

Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, October 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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