Shooting Elvis

Rating:
Summary: Very classy modern-urban-techno-mystery with good characters
Review: Mary Alice Baker is just an ordinary girl from a small Southern California town who's trying hard to be normal. She works in a baby photo studio at the mall and sees the world through her own much darker photography. She has an abusive father and a biker boyfriend. Then she quite unintentionally explodes a bomb at LAX, decides it's time to completely change her life, and becomes Nina Zero. Then things get complicated. As you get farther into this book, the story and Nina's personality both get darker, too, just like her photography. She hooks up with a kitsch artist and a paranoid documentary film-maker, goes to work for a grossly overweight detective, and learns how to handle a revolver. Mary Alice was basically a nice girl in fuzzy sweaters, but Nina is definitely dangerous. It's a fast read, only a little over 200 pages, but the protagonist becomes a very real person, deftly drawn and developed, and you'll care about what happens to her. Also, properly cast, this book would make a terrific movie!

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD GIRL'S FANTASY OF GOING BAD
Review: Never heard of Eversz - picked the book up off a sale table. Best buy of the month. The name on the cover said "R M Everz" and I (female) read it thinking it had been written by a woman. Good going! I loved Nina's funky, gutsy character. The only trouble I had with her was that she was too clever to be that dumb about some things. Guess that was Mary Alice coming through. The story was well paced and action packed, with right-on-target humor and irony, but still held a poignant reminder of what abuse can do to a person. I'll be looking for MR Eversz next book.

Rating:
Summary: From Mary To Nina
Review: SHOOTING ELVIS is an action thriller, but it has an unusual twist at the start that separates it from many other thrillers. This unusual feature is that the very first thing we are told is that Mary Baker is telling us the story from her prison cell. Given that the bulk of the book is about her attempts to hide from the FBI and the police, we know from the start that she is ultimately unsuccessful. But as we are to learn, success or failure can be a very subjective thing.

Mary Baker should have known better than to trust Wrex. Her unshaven, tattooed, Harley-riding boyfriend with his ripped jeans and red bandanna was hardly convincing when he pleaded with her to deliver a package to someone waiting at L.A. International Airport. The package turns out to be a briefcase and moments after she has delivered it to a man with a foreign accent, the briefcase explodes killing the man and ensuring that pandemonium breaks out. In return for the briefcase, she has been given a heavy case which she manages to get to her car amid the confusion and then makes herself scarce.

After taking a little time to recover from the excitement at the airport, Mary soon realises that it won't be long before the police or the FBI come looking for her, so she decides to change her appearance and go into hiding. Before she gets a chance to leave though, she is visited by a couple of look-alike foreign agent-types who want to get their hands on the case she picked up from the airport. It's a visit from which she barely escapes and understands that her need to hide will be important to her health as well as to her freedom.

So Mary reinvents herself as Nina Zero, a retro punk drop-out, used to surviving the harsh street life. She finds herself a couple of room-mates who are suitably off-beat while providing adequate cover. Billy b is a driven artist intent on producing the ultimate American kitsch symbol and Cass is an out of work screenwriter waiting for her big break to come along. They each discover that the answer to what they are looking for may have walked into their laps in the form of the fugitive Mary and prepare themselves for fame or fortune on the back of her notoriety.

Meanwhile, Mary (as Nina) divides her time between trying to break into the artistic photography scene and joining a detective agency. The first has always been a far off, unattainable dream while the second is her way of solving some of the mysteries brought about by her new role as criminal-in-hiding.

First and foremost, this is an entertaining thriller dealing primarily with a cat and mouse chase story, but it's told with a humorously droll delivery. But it's also an examination of the way the experience has affected Mary. She starts out as an ordinary young woman leading a reasonably normal uneventful life. She allowed herself to be pushed around by her father and boyfriend, lacking the courage to stick up for herself. By the end of the book, although she's in a lot more trouble, she's a changed woman and has come out of the ordeal a mentally stronger person. It's this character development that I thought gave the story tremendous depth, unexpectedly so.

Robert Eversz has managed to keep the tone of the novel light even though the action becomes quite tense, sometimes downright desperate. The story moves ahead at all times without any flat spots, occasionally taking time out from the main chase storyline to explore a minor life experience that adds to the transformation from Mary to Nina. I found the book to be very entertaining, culminating in a poignant, satisfying ending.