29. A Murder in Hollywood

A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime. Casey Sherman. 2024. 304 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Lana Turner paced the pink carpeted floor with a cigarette gripped tightly between her fingers. She took a deep drag into her lungs and blew out a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling of her spacious bedroom. Her fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl, was in her own bedroom, sobbing hysterically. 

Premise/plot: Nonfiction with a gossipy twist--that is how I would describe this one. It gives brief biographies of Lana Turner and her immediate family (her parents, her husbands, her daughter) and brief biographies of a series of crime bosses (mob bosses) including Johnny Stompanato. The stories cross paths when Lana Turner entangles herself with Johnny Stompanato. This is a combustive relationship--for sure--leading to murder and scandal. Casey Sherman argues that it was not Lana's fourteen-year-old daughter but Lana herself who killed Johnny. 

My thoughts: This book is troubling and disturbing both in content and narrative style. I'll try to explain. This one goes into great detail--graphic detail--of horrific crimes. Many of these crimes are of the SA of a minor child variety. Of course there are plenty of other crimes as well that do not involve children. But still. This is a HEAVY read that is treated perhaps a little lighter than I would personally like. The book's approach--in my personal opinion--is like gossip, gossip, give me all the gossip, spill all the tea, tell me everything. It doesn't necessarily--to me--seem respectful. The content IS shocking and NOT shocking at the same time. Hollywood is presented as an absolute nightmare. The more power and influence, the more guilty you are of horrendous crimes. Nothing glamorous or glitzy--just very horrific crimes going on and kept hush-hush by the powers that be. 

This one is definitely more graphic than I like to read.

 

 

© 2024 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

79. Dial A for Aunties

Dial A for Aunties. Jesse Q. Sutanto. 2021. 299 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: There is a curse in my family. It's followed us all the way from China, where it took my great-grandfather (freak accident on the farm that involved a pregnant sow and an unfortunately placed rake), to Indonesia, where it claimed my grandfather (a stroke at the age of thirty, nothing quite so dramatic as great-grandfather's demise but still rather upsetting.) My mom and aunts figured that a Chinese curse wouldn't follow them to the West, so after they all got married, they moved to San Gabriel, California. But not only did the curse find them, it mutated. Instead of killing the men in my family, it made them leave, which is so much worse.

Premise/plot: Meddelin Chan is a wedding photographer in her family's wedding business. (Don't leave your big day to chance, leave to the Chans!) The novel opens with her family setting her up on a blind date. Well, an arranged date. I believe it is her mom who has been chatting up a guy on a dating app pretending to be Meddelin. Surprise, you're meeting tonight after months of texting/chatting. The date goes horribly wrong almost from the start. It ends in disaster. Literally. It will take a whole family to get Meddelin out of this mess....but are they up for the job? 

The family has a BIG, BIG, BIG wedding--on an island--the next day. On this island, Meddelin will bump into her old college boyfriend...Nathan. The wedding is a huge disaster... can anything good come from this weekend???

My thoughts: This book has a weird/odd sense of humor. It is definitely a slapstick style comedy....but with a dead body as a prop for most of the novel. It is not a murder mystery. (No mystery to it). It isn't really seen as a grave situation (pun intended) but rather an over-the-top slapstick comedy. 

It features flashbacks. I liked some of them. But the flashbacks definitely added some graphic-ness to this one. Definitely not clean. But I personally think it was sneakily done. The first half (or perhaps first third) is relatively clean, no obvious red flags. Then BOOM it is a graphic romance novel--in flashback form. By this point I was hooked enough to *need* to keep reading. But I felt bad about it. (Not a win-win situation). 

The jacket flap is all about "four aunties" this and that. But NONE of the aunts had names--just numbers. The first aunt, I believe, was called Big Aunt, but the rest were just numbers. And I *think* though I'm not positive that Meddelin's own mother was one of the four aunts. Which is just weird that she's lumped in as an auntie. Yes, she's a sister. But she's not Meddelin's auntie. I suppose it is possible that there was a mother + 4 aunties. It really BOTHERED me that the aunts did not have names. 

This one just wasn't my personal 'cup of tea' if you will. My sense of humor did not align with the book's sense of humor.

 

© 2023 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Under the Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King. 2009. [November 2009]. Simon & Schuster. 1088 pages.

From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester's Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down.

How many books can you think of that make you thankful--really thankful--for fresh air, for oxygen?

Stephen King's Under the Dome is quite a book. At over a thousand pages, it has plenty of drama to offer readers. King's message that absolute power corrupts absolutely is well played out in its pages. As readers meet some really dirty, really corrupt, downright evil politicians.

The book begins by introducing us to Dale Barbara, one of the heroes--one of the good guys; he is on his way out of town. After having one too many confrontations with "Junior" the son of the most evil politician (who just happens to be a used car salesman too) in town, Barbie has decided he's had enough. It's time to move on. And quickly. But. He never makes it out of town. Something stops him. The dome. On the day the dome appears (October 21), life changes dramatically and drastically. The dome isolates this little town. No one can get in or out. In fact, nothing can get in or out. Not water. Not wind. Not rain. Not air. (Not much air at any rate.)

What's to keep the residents from panicking? Not much! Especially with Jim Rennie in charge. In fact, he thinks Dome Day is just about the best thing that ever happened to him. Suddenly, he's the guy in charge. There is no one to stop him. He can implement anything in the name of "doing good for the city" and who can challenge his authority? The fact that the President of the United States has chosen Dale Barbara to take command? Not gonna stop Big Jim! It's just one more reason why Barbie (or Baaarbie needs to be taken care of). And Barbie knows it. As do his friends.

How long can a community stay a community? How long before residents start turning on one another? How long before they become "us" and "them"? How long before the mob mentality takes over completely? Will any one be safe under the dome?

I imagine it has enough appeal for readers of horror and readers of science fiction. Is it for everyone? No. I don't think a book has to be for everyone. This one has plenty of horrific details. The language. The graphic nature of death and violence and sex and drug use. It's going to turn some readers off. Also this one could definitely be offensive to those who are religious. King's depiction of Christianity is abrasive, harsh. (No question about that!) What I wasn't expecting exactly in this very dark, very horrific book is the humor. (Though it was often a dark sense of humor.) Like this description of a trucker colliding with the Dome:

The trucker might have been overloaded and moving too fast, Barbie thought, but at least he was getting a Viking funeral. (41)

Or this one of an unlucky farmer:

On God Creek Road, Bob Roux had been digging potatoes. He came in for lunch (more commonly known as "dinnah" in those parts), sitting astride his old Deere tractor and listening to his brand new iPod, a gift from his wife on what would prove to be his final birthday. His house was only half a mile from the field he'd been digging, but unfortunately for him, the field was in Motton and the house was in Chester's Mill. He struck the barrier at fifteen miles an hour, while listening to James Blunt sing "You're Beautiful." He had the loosest of grips on the tractor's steering wheel, because he could see the road all the way to his house and there was nothing on it. So when his tractor came to a smash-halt, the potato-digger rising up behind and then crashing back down, Bob was flung forward over the engine block and directly into the Dome. His iPod exploded in the wide front pocket of his bib overalls, but he never felt it. He broke his neck and fractured his skull on the nothing he collided with and died in the dirt shortly thereafter, by one tall wheel of his tractor, which was still idling. Nothing, you know, runs like a Deere. (34)

Expect plenty of drama and devastation. But I found the book to be an engaging read.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Counterfeit Son (YA)

Alphin, Elaine Marie. 2000. Counterfeit Son. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 180 pages.

He chose the Lacey family at first because of the sailboats.

This was completely an impulsive read. There was no urgency in getting to it. It's not a new book. (Though I believe it is soon to be reprinted soon in paperback by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. January 2010, according to B&N.) But the moment I picked it up, the moment I read the first page, I just had to keep reading this one. It was so very readable, so very compelling. Which--just so you know--was so unexpected, because this is not a book in my comfort zone, this genre is not one I usually read. At all. And yet for some reason, it grabbed my attention from the start.

Long story short, I was surprised by this one. And I definitely recommend it! It is the 2001 winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery.

What is it about? It's about a son who hates his father. With good reason. Cameron, our narrator, is a young boy--fourteen, I think--who has been through so much. His father, a man he calls Pop, is a serial killer and child abuser. But there is light, there is hope. Now that his father is dead--killed in a police raid--Cameron sees his chance. He wants a new life, a real life. By claiming to be someone he's not, by pretending to be one of the victims, Neil Lacey. But will this plan work? Or will his past catch up with him?

You can read an excerpt here.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

The Red Necklace

Gardner, Sally. 2008. The Red Necklace.

This one was good, almost but not quite deliciously good. I think if I hadn't been reading for the 48 Hour Challenge, I could have savored this one a bit more. But even with my focus being a teeny bit distracted by the clock, I must say this one is good. It's historical fiction. It's set in France during the French Revolution. It features some magic-working gypsies. It's got some light romance. But mainly it is all about secrets, mysteries, and murders. Definitely got a dark vibe to it. There are some fantasy elements as well.

It's well written. It's very readable. The prologue:

This is Paris; here the winds of change are blowing, whispering their discontent into the very hearts of her citizens. A Paris waiting for the first slow turn of a wheel that will bring with it a revolution the like of which Europe has never known. In the coming year the people will be called upon to play their part in the tearing down of the Bastille, in the destruction of the old regime, in the stopping of the clocks. This is where the devil goes walking, looking with interest in at the window of Dr. Guillotine, who works night and day to perfect his humane killing machine, sharpening his angled blade on the innocent necks of sheep. Little does the earnest doctor know that his new design will be center stage, a bloody altarpiece in the drama that is about to unfold. But wait, not so fast, King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, are still outside Paris, at Versailles. This is the winter of 1789, one of the worst in living memory. Jack Frost has dug his fingers deep into the heart of this frozen city, so that it looks almost unrecognizable under its thick blanket of snow. All still appears as it should be. All has yet to break...

Isn't the UK book cover lovely? I think it's truer to the book than the American cover. (Though it is pleasing to the eyes as well.) My only problem is that about 70% of the book (at the very least) is narrated by Yann, a young boy who comes to age during the course of the novel.

Definitely recommended.



© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews