Rating: 
Summary: Solid mystery with fantasy overtones
Review: The world of Ray Bradbury is a little more vivid, more lifelike, sometimes, than real life, and this book is no exception. A nostalgic look at a Los Angeles of a bygone era, with (almost as an aside) the machinery of a well-crafted mystery driving the story forward. The only somewhat askew part is in the ending, which sounds a bit as if written to be made into a movie. It's well written, but doesn't seem very Bradbury.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun, creepy noir homage.
Review: Venice, California, 1947. The boardwalk is slowly dying, the rollercoaster's on its last legs, and the oil wells pump sightlessly away just outside of town. On a trolley car racketing home one stormy night, a young man who dreams of writing science fiction gets a chilling message in his ear from an unseen man behind him... and soon, it seems that Death itself walks the streets of Venice, robbing the town of all the people who gave it its life and soul. Can a chubby would-be writer, a detective with a jungle in his backyard, and the world's greatest blind man beat Death at its own game? An immensely fun and beautifully written tribute to Raymond Chandler, based in good part on the author's own life. Fans of old Hollywood will want to check out the sequel, "A Graveyard For Lunatics."
Rating:
Summary: "Hard boiled" mystery, with tender-hearted sleuth.
Review: Writing in the style of hard-boiled mystery writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, Bradbury sets his story in Venice, California, in 1949, presenting as his main character a 27-year-old struggling writer, much like himself. Returning to Venice late one night on the last trolley from Los Angeles, he finds himself alone in the car, except for a mysterious, alcohol-fumed vagrant, who whispers in his ear, "Death is a lonely business." Convinced that he has met "Death's friend," the speaker gets "chicken skin," which gets worse when, upon arriving in Venice, he glances into an old canal and discovers, inside an abandoned lion cage, a body bobbing up and down on the tides. The city of Venice in 1949 is a place for the down-and-out, its pier and amusement park crumbling, its rollercoaster lying on its side "like the bones of a vast dinosaur," old animal cages abandoned in the canals and filled with fish, and the oil pumps looking like "great pterodactyls" as they creak and groan. Inhabited by "the lonelies," old people with no futures, Venice is a dark and dismal place in those final days before the pier is demolished. Bradbury's hypnotic descriptions of this decrepitude provide dramatic contrasts with the young speaker who still has hopes, dreams, and a future. With veteran detective Elmo Crumley as his mentor, the speaker tries to save lives and outwit a mysterious stalker, as more and more sad, old people meet their deaths. Hollywood performers, an opera singer, a lady who once raised canaries, a tarot card reader, an inept barber who knew Scott Joplin, and the owner of an old cinema all contribute to the color, atmosphere, and action in this unusual story of people and places which have outlived their usefulness. Bradbury's writing, as always, is witty, descriptive, imaginative, and atmospheric. These separate elements do not seem to jell into a coherent whole, however. The speaker and Crumley are supposed to be "hard-boiled," but their genuine tenderness and naivete work at cross-purposes with the sometimes gruesome deaths they investigate. Unlike the classic detectives, they seem to care more about the sad, old residents than they do about catching the killer. Elements of the supernatural impinge upon the realism, and the reader is not always sure whether strange events should be taken literally or figuratively. When the killer is finally identified, it's almost an anti-climax, since he is less developed and far less interesting than his victims. Ultimately, it's the inherent "niceness" of Bradbury's characters and his clear belief in life's hopefulness which work to undermine the drama and fear engendered by the bizarre murders. As Bradbury makes clear, if one adapts to life's changes, one can truly "live." Mary Whipple
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