Another book I didn't finish but shall come back to later once I forget some of the details and only because I know what happenes in the end and this book is filled with wild plot twists and I am here for the mess! Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise.

He gives a small laugh at the weird appropriateness of the thought, but at the same time it sits uneasily with him, as if he struggles to decide to which of his universes the scene should belong. According to the few, the very few, who saw the film before it was lost in the studio fire, The Devil’s Playground is the greatest horror movie, sound or silent, of all time.Four further novels have been made into films (in one of which Craig Russell makes a cameo appearance as a German detective). The house sits in the foothills, elevated enough to offer an unbroken twenty-five-mile view across the city to the ocean. In Rourke he has a strong character who carries much of the narrative as she digs into the money, power, and corruption of 1920s Los Angeles, allowing Russell to play with some colorful Hollywood names and legends.

The award winning Craig Russell immerses the reader in an atmospheric historical thriller with elements of the gothic, set in the turbulent 1920s silent golden era of Hollywood, on the cusp of the entry of talking movies. The atmosphere of the novel, set mostly on this wild Greek island, echoes strongly the classical tragedies of Greece. She climbs into her Packard and eases it down the decline toward the city that glitters in the night. Here the 1927 story dominates, with the evil that lurked in Louisiana now looming over Tinseltown and Rourke’s investigation of Carlton’s killing.Plus, the fact that every chapter ends with some jeopardy or something unspoken spurs you on to read more. Other scenes, set in the past, long before The Devil’s Playground is even a spark in someone’s imagination, all add to the legend that is to come, informing what follows in ways that brought a smile to my face and an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as the book drew to a close. Lindqvist runs away to join the Dahlman and Darke Magic Lantern Phantasmagoria circus after witnessing its sleight-of-hand act “where a dark shape spread itself wide. He knows that von Stroheim, in his near-­insane drive for authenticity, filmed and refilmed the scene in Death Valley in midsummer, at midday. The level of period detail is a delight that evokes an unforgettable era in this beautifully plotted thriller, packed with surprising twists, that I am sure will appeal to a wide variety of readers as well as fans of the author.

Norma Carlton, one of the most famous actresses of her time and leading lady of the still in-production movie The Devil’s Playground, has been found dead of an apparent suicide in her mansion. I gave it to the halfway point to really grab me, but it just never did and I decided not to invest anymore time into it. I think I would have enjoyed this more if it had just been dual timelines with equal time spent on both. She steps through the portico and doorway, into an entrance hall that is wide and white, the ceiling ribbed with Spanish arches.

More than one of the words I looked up once I had the definition seemed completely unnecessary to get the message across and felt used solely to hammer home how smart the author is. The picture will be completed, but it will be destroyed in a huge fire, and all copies will disappear except for the one that is rumored to exist, somewhere. In essence, her job is to troubleshoot issues arising and to tidy up uncomfortable or potentially ruinous acts carried out by anyone involved in the making of the film.

Film scholar Paul Conway drives to an old hotel in the Mojave Desert in 1967, hoping to find the one existing print of the “greatest horror movie” ever made: The Devil’s Playground. Time shifts back and forth and some of the characters reinvent themselves from period to period which could be a little confusing, but An] excellent, engrossing historical horror novel, one that explores the symbiosis of power and evil in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The architectural vernacular is a mix of Spanish Colonial Revival grandness and poured-concrete amenity. The same descriptive skill comes to the fore when he introduces Kansas-born Boy Lindqvist in an 1897 storyline.Those few seconds of film are supposed to give a clue to the identity of the murderer—someone connected to the movie and connected to the kind of weird secret stuff that was going on in the background. Even at this height the air hangs heavy and orange- grove-scent laden, like a perfumed cloak draped around the shoulders of the Santa Monica Mountains. The conclusion ties up a lot of loose ends in what has been a busy plot, but some readers may figure things out sooner, as Russell drops a few obvious clues early on.