Rating: 
Summary: Couldn' t put it down!
Review: I read this at a trip to Portugal. My real intentions for the trip were to see Portugal; instead I sat in my hotel room reading this book. But, then again, the book only took like a couple of hours to read, just impossible to put down.
When I bought this book I didn't expect such a classically-written piece of work! Brilliant. The plot just had to be written; it was an obvious plot to the modern audience. One little snag (!) you'll mostly likely guess who the killer is by the first pages, but it doesn't matter! It's still great!
Rating: 
Summary: Reality TV at his best
Review: The novel „Dead Famous" by Ben Elton is about a Big Brother show in Great Britain. It says in the book: 'One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder...and no evidence' - this is the plot. The show invents an artificial world in a reality TV show. The truth often is bent and Ben Elton narrates this very thrilling and obscure. I enjoyed reading "Dead Famous", because it is a nice book written in colloquial English. Reality TV is a current phenomenon and in this book the plot is genuine.
So everyone interested in today's TV confusion should read this honest novel by Ben Elton!
Rating:
Summary: Reality TV at his best
Review: The novel „Dead Famous" by Ben Elton is about a Big Brother show in Great Britain. It says in the book: 'One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder...and no evidence' - this is the plot. The show invents an artificial world in a reality TV show. The truth often is bent and Ben Elton narrates this very thrilling and obscure. I enjoyed reading "Dead Famous", because it is a nice book written in colloquial English. Reality TV is a current phenomenon and in this book the plot is genuine.
So everyone interested in today's TV confusion should read this honest novel by Ben Elton!
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic who dunnit!
Review: Welcome to the set of "House Arrest Three." A reality based tv show were you get voted out of the house. But a big surprise happens along the way. Murder. The book starts off with the investigating detective rolling through the tapes of house arrest. Then piece by piece the story starts falling into place. What Elton gives us is laughter,sexy scenes,violent arguments,and just about everything else you can think of from reality tv. Then the murder.Now like anybody else you can usually figure out who dunnit before the end but with dead famous I kept saying to myself "I know who did it" but I had five suspects in my head. So Elton keeps you on your toes.
The dramatic climax straight out of a classic who dunnit movie or book was when the detective had everyone together (including the millions of people on the telly)and gave the motives and alibi's of all the suspects to the conclusion of the fingering of the murderer. Brilliant!
There is a quote from one of the tabloids from a review of this book that says "A perfect modern day who-dunnit". It dont get no better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Big up to Ben!
Review: Wicked. Fair play to Ben for a really bigged up top book. A whodunnit and a satire on exploitative reality shows in one. In Dead Famous a collection of misfits and wannabees are penned into a Big Brother type house for 10 weeks, but the difference this time is that one of them is actually murdered. Elton manages to keep you guessing for the first half of the book on the identity of the victim and for the second half on the identity of the murderer. Meanwhile the show's producers cynically manipulate "the reality" to make "really good telly", taking comments out of context and splicing dialogue to non-contemporaneous images. Elton exposes the hip young culture of many modern TV shows for what it is - vapid, while at the same time taking swipes at the politicians and social commentators who try and curry favour by appearing on such shows and feigning empathy with the values espoused. When left wingers do it they look silly, but when right wingers do it they look ridiculous. At the same time he actually champions the experienced but so-not-with-it Inspector Coleridge who brilliantly unfolds the mystery of the "House Arrest" set, using his love of MacBeth as a guide. What I like about Elton is that although he may often appear as an anti-establishment figure, he is prepared to support what is good and moral in people like Colerdidge and condemn the loser values of the Reality TV genre. Only minor grumble about the book's credibility was the fact that the police allowed the show to continue after the murder - they would of course have kept the crime scene isolated for longer. Elton could have used the replica set for the continuation of the game and been more credible. So in summary a really amusing book, which exposes the reality TV genre (if it really needed exposing) for what it is. You might not be too happy with your kids (<16) reading this because of the language, appropriate and realistic though it might be.
Rating:
Summary: Big up to Ben!
Review: Wicked. Fair play to Ben for a really bigged up top book. A whodunnit and a satire on exploitative reality shows in one. In Dead Famous a collection of misfits and wannabees are penned into a Big Brother type house for 10 weeks, but the difference this time is that one of them is actually murdered. Elton manages to keep you guessing for the first half of the book on the identity of the victim and for the second half on the identity of the murderer. Meanwhile the show's producers cynically manipulate "the reality" to make "really good telly", taking comments out of context and splicing dialogue to non-contemporaneous images. Elton exposes the hip young culture of many modern TV shows for what it is - vapid, while at the same time taking swipes at the politicians and social commentators who try and curry favour by appearing on such shows and feigning empathy with the values espoused. When left wingers do it they look silly, but when right wingers do it they look ridiculous. At the same time he actually champions the experienced but so-not-with-it Inspector Coleridge who brilliantly unfolds the mystery of the "House Arrest" set, using his love of MacBeth as a guide. What I like about Elton is that although he may often appear as an anti-establishment figure, he is prepared to support what is good and moral in people like Colerdidge and condemn the loser values of the Reality TV genre. Only minor grumble about the book's credibility was the fact that the police allowed the show to continue after the murder - they would of course have kept the crime scene isolated for longer. Elton could have used the replica set for the continuation of the game and been more credible. So in summary a really amusing book, which exposes the reality TV genre (if it really needed exposing) for what it is. You might not be too happy with your kids (<16) reading this because of the language, appropriate and realistic though it might be.
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