Let's All Kill Constance Book

I have never been one who fancied Ray Bradbury's mystery novels. Reading "Let's all kill Constance", third in this particular series, I was kind of lost.

Essentially, an unnamed protagonist is pulled to his front door on a dark and stormy night by Constance, a wayward movie star who lives just down the beach. She is distraught, pushed over the edge by two "books of the dead". The dead and nearly dead in these books are all know by her and seem to be harbingers of her own impending doom. the protagonist, along with a detective pal of his begin an informal investigation to help save her life, leading them to a priest, a psychic, a tomb and the ghosts of hollywood past.

all in all it was a decent story. I would suggest it to others and found that it was very enjoyable. The problem was the delay I experienced putting myself in the storyline. The clumsy (yet precise) speech and the conversations the characters had were the problem. The characters are all witty and seem to share constant inside jokes, without the courtesy of letting the reader in.

Once I picked up on the groove of their interactions, I was sitting in a much more comfortable position. Unfortunately, even as I neared the end of the book, I found I was reading and rereading passages to pick up the important details.

In review, it was a fantastic novel but not very accessible, even to an avid reader such as myself. The tongue in cheek humor, and self serving references to Fahrenheit 451 were enough to make the novel worth reading. Pick it up if you find interest in it.

Toastx2

This book was not good. What works in a short story does not translate to a 200+ page novel. It's not a good sign that I was reading a Philip K. Dick book at the same time, and THIS book was more heady and trippy. The mistake Bradbury makes (yeesh, that sucks to say) is not giving the reader anything tangible to stand on. We are constantly whisked away here and yonder before we really know what's going on. It's very quick and conversational, which works fine in his shorter works, but doesn't work to great or even good effect for me here. Not near the best from an undoubtedly great author.