Shot in Dallas

Rating:
Summary: A Smart, Bitchy and Unconventional Murder Mystery
Review: Shot in Dallas is a smart, cynical, bitchy story about the emerging feature film industry in Dallas in the 1980's. Harry Preston's unconventional murder mystery is ideal for poolside reading, or to stuff into your carry-on to take along on the plane. This romp in front of the cameras - and behind them - will bring you up to date on what is going on in Dallas movie production circles, which is apparently nothing.

Centered on the making of an "exploitation horror flick," Shot in Dallas brings the perpetrators of a cinematic disaster up close and personal through the unflinching eye of Preston's pen. Focusing on an oddly typical assortment of wannabe rich and trying to be famous, the book reveals a superficial world of artistic underachievement and technical incompetence that seems to define the Dallas film industry.

Shot in Dallas is loosely based on the actual shooting of a thankfully forgotten film called Honeymoon Horror - in the book called Terror in Texas. The plot revolves around screen-writer Eloit Lindstrum as he completes a script "too good for this film," and then works on the actual production of the movie itself, from start to bitter end. Eliot is a surrogate for Preston himself, whose own screenwriting experience lends a sense of realism and personal involvement to the story.

Shot in Dallas starts out with a bang, or should I say gulp, as we come face to face in Chapter One with the accidental murder of movie star Eve Santana as she prepares to make a film at Hedley Christopher Studios. It seems the cyanide laced orange juice that Miss Santana consumes on the set was actually intended for Christopher instead. But who is trying to kill Hedley, and why? Two accidental deaths and three murders later, the film is a wrap, and so is the murderer. Along the way, we meet an assortment of directors, producers and actors, all on the list of suspects.

This book will be especially appealing to gay readers, since it is the first mainstream novel I have read with as many gay characters as straight. Yet it manages not to be the one thing gay novels can be: a gay exploitation sex novel. It is, in fact, quite refreshing that so many gay characters are portrayed in this book as the normal, quirky, and occasionally poignant people they really are, instead of the cardboard queens and dykes who usually populate popular fiction.

Harry Preston is a former Hollywood screen writer who retired to Dallas, had a go at making films in Texas, and now teaches screen writing at Dallas' Richland College.