Well....you might find Ray Bradbury's Let's All Kill Constance shelved at your local library or bookstore under "mystery" but let me tell you, this ain't your usual detective novel. This is Bradbury channeling Faulkner or some other stream-of-consciousness writer and throwing all his lovely language and metaphors into a mixer and spewing out craziness. Seriously.As if it's not crazy enough that our unnamed hero has an aging, has-been Hollywood star, Constance Rattigan (Is that a glamorous, star-studded name or what....makes me think of Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. Sorry, got distracted there for a minute.)...where was I? Oh, yeah. An aging, has-been Hollywood star, Constance Rattigan, pounding on his door one "dark and stormy night" swearing that Death is following her. Literally. He's left his calling card on her her doorstep in the form of two "books of death": an old phone book where everyone she knows is dead (except her) and her old, discarded "little black book" where nearly everyone is dead and the ones who aren't (including her) seem to be marked for the grave. She begs for his help, dumps the books, and vanishes. He spends the rest of the book hunting down ghosts. Ghosts of Hollywood past. Ghosts of Contance's past. Ghosts that seem to be dogging his footsteps. With his sidekick, Crumley, he takes off in a dilapidated old car and visits characters from Tinseltown's glory days. Each one leading him further on the trail of secrets. Is everyone really out to kill Constance or is she the one leaving a path of destruction in her wake?And this doesn't even touch the strangeness that passes for dialogue in this novel. I'm quite sure there are all sorts of in-jokes and references that have gone right over my head. But I was so lost in the stream that I'm not sure I would have recognized any that I did know. Bradbury can write. You'll get no argument from me on that one. But I like it a lot better when I feel like I've got solid ground under my feet. I spent most of the book feeling like I was in one of those Fun Houses at the Carnival where the floor suddenly tips or bounce or slides or you-name-it. I couldn't get a grip on any of it.When I read his mystery Death Is a Lonely Business, I said: "The plot line is a bit shaky...disappearing in the mist at times like the shadowy character of Death's friend, but his descriptions are solid and the clues are there if the reader is quick enough to spot them. His characters are real and you feel the unnamed hero's frustration and fear as he tries to figure out who is next on Death's list and unmask the killer before he claims all his victims."This time I had no clue whatsoever what was going on. Two stars (sortof) out of five.
I have never been one who fancied Ray Bradbury’s mystery novels. Reading “Let’s all kill Constance”, third in this particular series, I was kind of lost.Essentially, an unnamed protagonist is pulled to his front door on a dark and stormy night by Constance, a wayward movie star who lives just down the beach. She is distraught, pushed over the edge by two “books of the dead”. The dead and nearly dead in these books are all know by her and seem to be harbingers of her own impending doom. the protagonist, along with a detective pal of his begin an informal investigation to help save her life, leading them to a priest, a psychic, a tomb and the ghosts of hollywood past.all in all it was a decent story. I would suggest it to others and found that it was very enjoyable. The problem was the delay I experienced putting myself in the storyline. The clumsy (yet precise) speech and the conversations the characters had were the problem. The characters are all witty and seem to share constant inside jokes, without the courtesy of letting the reader in.Once I picked up on the groove of their interactions, I was sitting in a much more comfortable position. Unfortunately, even as I neared the end of the book, I found I was reading and rereading passages to pick up the important details.In review, it was a fantastic novel but not very accessible, even to an avid reader such as myself. The tongue in cheek humor, and self serving references to Fahrenheit 451 were enough to make the novel worth reading. Pick it up if you find interest in it.--xpost RawBlurb.com
A fast and very enjoyable read. Bradbury's story-telling style, humor, and wit are certainly some of the best one can get there hands on. Yet, this particular work was a little hard to follow (for me) as many of the references felt like inside jokes between the incredibly witty protagonists. Once I got into the flow of their conversations it became ever easier to follow the sloppy (but somehow also spot-on) language but the fact that many of the places, movies, and people referred to where at large unknown to me I feel like I've not been able to enjoy many parts as one could have. When I was able to catch a reference (such as Bradbury referring to Fahrenheit 451) immediately a smile crept on my face and I felt closer to the story.All in all a very well made blend of facts and fiction in a mystery novel.
—Jens
This is a strange book. The book vaguely semi-autobiographical, set around 1960 in Hollywood, but veers deeply into the mystery of Constance Rattigan, an eternally attractive, aging, free-spirited, haunted, still-young, movie star. Constance has a fear of death, and a past and some secrets to overcome. She swims with seals, drinks, sleeps, runs around, maybe murders, and much more. Constance does not actually make very lengthy appearances in the book. Most of the time is spent with the young narrator, the detective Crumley, and sometimes Blind Henry. By 1960, the Hollywood of this story is steeped in nostalgia and memories. Many things come up, like the Mt. Lowe railway, the Chinese theater, and many old actors and actresses are recalled. The writing style is sometimes a bit off-putting. The narrator is impulsive, and not terribly sympathetic, or even coherent. At times, I became seriously confused about what was actually happening. Certainly events become fantastical at times. At other points of the book, I stopped to track down obscure historical references on the internet, and being amazed by what I was discovering.The book is kind of sequel to "Death is a Lonely Business" and "A Graveyard for Lunatics" in that is shares the same main characters. However, the style and mood is very different from the two earlier books (and they are very different from each other as well).It is not a book to speed-read (you won't appreciate), rather one to read slowly if you can handle it.Personal comment: My great grandfather was the principal engineer for the Mt. Lowe Railway. You can look up his Wikipedia page.
—Sam
This book is like pulled pork, sloughing off the page, falling apart in your mind. Is there some commonality to the aging process in these golden age science fiction authors that leads them, in their twilight years, to write incomprehensible nostalgia? Time Enough for Love, I'm looking at you. Each sentence itself, practically, is broken, and they don't fit together in a way from which I can extract meaning as I normally would, but holistically I can tell that there is meaning present. There is mood, there are references to things I cannot imagine understanding, there is action, of a sort. It's as if this is the final book in some saga and I'm already supposed to be totally comfortable with these characters qua characters. And while I'm talking about my characters, another factor reminiscient of Heinlein is the way that the characters are all indistinguishable from one another. A real bit of characterization, in this book, a real distinguishing feature, is having a character prefer wine to vodka.I feel like this is an archaeology expedition, me reading this book and piecing together what I can of Bradbury's Hollywood infatuation, where the ostraka are records of his archaeology expedition to the bowels of an LA that never existed.PS: check your privilege.
—Gabriel C.
