Where Everything Ends: The Mystery Novels of Ray Bradbury | |||||||
Ray Bradbury | |||||||
Subterranean Press, 785 pages | |||||||
|
A review by Mario Guslandi
Death is a Lonely Business, originally published in 1985 and set in 1949, takes place in the town of
Venice, California, a place bound to an inexorable decline, plagued by a series of suspicious deaths and
inexplicable disappearances. The narrator is a young writer, easily identified with Bradbury himself, who
will solve the mystery with the help of an experienced detective called Emo Crumley.
The following novel, A Graveyard for Lunatics, first published in 1990 and set in 1954, is located, as
the subtitle states, "in two cities," that is the Hollywood film studio, Maximus Films, and the adjacent
cemetery, Green Glades. The main character is a young scriptwriter (again, Bradbury himself) getting involved
in solving a puzzle starting with the discovery of the body of man who had been dead for twenty years, right
against the wall between the graveyard and the studio.
The last (and arguably the weakest) chapter of the trilogy is represented by Let's All Kill Constance,
appeared in print in 2002. Set eleven years later than Death is a Lonely Business, the novel
features the same main characters (Bradbury's double, i.e. the Californian writer, and detective Crumley)
engaged in the attempt to prevent the murders of a series of people from the Hollywood world, all included
on a death list provided by the aging film star Constance Rattigan.
A few, similar comments can apply to the three novels. Here we have very atypical detective stories written
in a medley of styles and displaying a great variety of tones. Bradbury's extraordinary ability to jump from
poetry to irony, from reality to fantasy, seems unfit to produce coherent, credible mystery stories.
Apparently inspired to the works of genre masters such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James
Cain, etc., Bradbury's attempts to consistently carve plausible plots and especially to create the
required atmosphere fall short.
Instead we have enjoyable, imaginative noir pastiches (occasionally on the verge of parody) featuring
stereotypical characters and ending with slow and a bit disappointing denouements.
In short, it seems to me that Bradbury's mystery novels just lack the dark nature of the genre, possibly
because, when all is said and done, the author's general attitude is a tongue-in-cheek approach to the canons of the noir.
Real fans of crime and mystery have little reason to rejoice, but confirmed admirers of Bradbury's talent
will be happy to see all his detective stories bound under one cover.
Mario Guslandi lives in Milan, Italy, and is a long-time fan of dark fiction. His book reviews have appeared on a number of genre websites such as The Alien Online, Infinity Plus, Necropsy, The Agony Column and Horrorwold. |
If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide