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KILL ME AGAIN
by Terence Faherty
The Mystery Company, October 2003
320 pages
$14.00
ISBN: 1932325026


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Don't waste time reading this review, go out and buy this book right now; I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

Scott Elliott was an actor just about to make it big in the studio system of old Hollywood when World War II took him off to the battlefields of Europe. Now he's back in Hollywood, but instead of acting he's working for a security firm whose clients include some of the heaviest hitters in the movie business.

The biggest news in Tinsel Town is a sequel to the hugely successful 1942 picture Passage to Lisbon, a movie Elliott knows almost by heart. The sequel is in the early phases of production when its writer is found shot dead in his home, clutching the script in his hand as if offering a clue to the identity of his killer. To complicate things, when Elliott arrives at the crime scene, his boss shows him a note written on hotel stationary asking why the studio is using a Commie to write the script.

Hollywood Security's task is to save the picture and protect the studio, but Elliott finds he must go deeper into the past to find out the truth behind the murder. As he investigates, long-buried secrets rise up to haunt the living. The impending McCarthy hearings, the pre-war German American Bund, payoffs, love triangles and greed flavor this dense and satisfying plot.

Over it all, the fog of war hangs like a ghost. The book evokes a time when men were still judged by their service records and the grief for those who were lost in battle was still an open wound in the public psyche. The desperation and despair of the post-war period play against the glamour of Hollywood to paint the best noir story that I've read in years. Elliott's deep sense of justice provides an anchor in a corrupt and fast-changing world, and, like the movies of the period, this book provides a rich and fully realized world in which to lose yourself for a few hours.

There are phrases in this book so apt and original that they will make you stop reading just so you can savor them a little longer. Every detail is pitch perfect. The vivid descriptions of the clothes, the drinks, the cars, and, most of all, the movies, make this a dream of a book that you won't want to end.

Note: This book was originally published in 1996 by Simon and Schuster

Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, November 2003

This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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