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AS DEAD AS IT GETS
by Cady Kalian
Forge, August 2006
352 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0765313642


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Maggie Mars was a New York investigative journalist who is now in Los Angeles working on a screenplay. Luckily, though she has no track record of any written plays or films, she has gotten herself appointed as a board member of the Creative Artists Union, also known as COU, pronounced COW.

When Roger Urban, COU's executive director doesn't show up for an important meeting, the rank and file are angry. But as the days go by, no one can find Roger at all. Then the news comes in that he has been found murdered, and even more importantly to the gossip-loving film people, he was found dead in a bathtub dressed in a red garter belt and women's underwear.

Maggie liked Roger, he had been nice to her and helped her in getting to be known in LA, so she feels bad about his death. This makes her journalistic tendencies perk up and Maggie feels the need to find out what happened to him.

Fortunately for her, her ex-boyfriend, a NY cop, just happens to have transfered to LA and as luck would have it, has been assigned to Roger's death. Though they had officially broken up with some hard feelings between them and Maggie has since hooked up with Henrick, a wildly attractive and successful LA defense attorney, she still feels a thrill when she speaks, and inevitably argues with him, so she uses her ex-boyfriend to find out details about Roger's case.

Both her boyfriends and her father, a retired chemist with a habit of exploding things in his retirement home, all tell her not to get involved and that it can be dangerous. But does Maggie listen? No, of course not. So when she's menaced a few times with notes telling her to mind her own business and not investigate, she feels it a point of honor that she continue to delve into the story.

I didn't enjoy this book much. Too many details that made no sense were used and it read as if the writer didn't care if the coincidences were ridiculous. It seemed as if the writer didn't have enough respect for the readers to take the extra effort to make her story solid.

Maggie spends a lot of time judging other members of the COU because they have had no hits recently, but Maggie herself has no finished films to her name, yet it seems that no one cares and she's put on the union's board. Her ex-boyfriend just happens to be relocated in LA in the exact precinct that will be called in on the murder. And her roommate is so much a cliché of a gay man that it borders on offensive.

The main character of Maggie's screenplay is one of those staples of the poorly-written movie: the gorgeous investigative reporter whose good looks and wise mouth gets her into trouble and saves the day at the same time. Maggie seems to understand that her screenplay won't be of much worth because she can't bring herself to work on it.

To make it all worse, the solution to the murder is weak and isn't very satisfying. All in all, as a murder mystery AS DEAD AS IT GETS, is as dead as a story gets.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, November 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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