Earthquake Weather

Rating:
Summary: Inside Hollywood
Review: What better way to grab a reader's attention that to start a book with a major, building destroying earthquake. EARTHQUAKE WEATHER starts with the 1994 Los Angeles quake to get things jumping. We ride it out through the eyes of Mark Hayes who, along with his room-mate handles the terrifying event like a veteran. Apart from providing a rip-roaring start to the book, the earthquake is used as the catalyst for the events that follow over the next few months in Hayes' life.

While L.A. is recovering from the earthquake, Hayes' life gets rocked for a second time when he discovers Dexter Morton floating face down in his swimming pool. Dexter Morton is a movie producer and is Mark's boss, but he is also a detestable man who was sure to have had many enemies any of whom would have had reason to kill him.

Partly because he feels that he may be the number one suspect and partly because he thinks he may know who the killer actually is, Mark throws himself into a spot of amateur sleuthing. The fact that he is suddenly unemployed thanks to his boss's untimely demise has something to do with his interest in the case too.

So what we are treated to is a murder investigation of sorts delving into the more seamy bars and nightclubs around Hollywood. Interestingly, although the main storyline revolves around a murder, it's not the murder itself that gives this book its direction it's the effect that the murder has on the lives of those who were close to the victim.

Through the characters, the grimy second-tier of Hollywood is uncovered as a world of dissatisfied, bitter or downright beaten people who have tried to make it in the industry, only to be eaten up and spat out. Mark Hayes, the narrating voice of the story, works as a lowly creative executive (script reader), working for the tyrannical Dexter Morton. He has aspirations to become a producer himself one day, although as the story progresses that possibility looks more and more remote.

Representing the most common category of failed aspirants is Charity Brown. She is the small-town beauty who came to Hollywood to be an actress and got herself a couple of small movie roles thanks to her stunning looks. Then the roles dried up and she became the trophy girlfriend of Dexter Morton and hopelessly addicted to drugs. The inevitable downward spiral of her life is as common as it is tragic.

Then there is Clyde McCoy, Mark's neighbour and an ex-screenwriter who has turned his back on the business after being burnt on a movie deal years before. He puts forward the plight of the screenwriter as sitting on the lowest rung of the Hollywood ladder. He's a bitter disillusioned man, but he is also the source of many of the insightful stories about the life that he shunned. McCoy is given a fully developed background by Lankford breathing life into his character, yet he remains the great enigma of the story.

I found this to be a hugely entertaining book, with the story smacking of the feeling that, yes, this is what life is actually like for the writers, the aspiring actresses, the hopeful film-makers. Mark's investigation doesn't necessarily roll along at a fast pace, but it opens up the world around him and introduces us to more troubling issues such as the role of drugs and sex in this surreal side of life.

Given that Terrill Lee Lankford has produced, directed and written feature films, his take on the darker side of Hollywood can be considered as coming from the voice of experience. He takes a great poke at a huge and powerful industry while providing a story that is darkly humorous and richly entertaining.

I would categorise EARTHQUAKE WEATHER as Hollywood noir, providing a realistic, but very entertaining insider view of the less glamorous side of the Hollywood film industry.