From Library Journal Plagued by a disappointed writer's string of anonymously ominous postcards, Griffin Mill, a powerful Hollywood movie studio executive, commits a senseless murder and then takes up with his victim's girlfriend. Tolkin, himself a screenwriter, squishes this meagre story into...
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From Library Journal Plagued by a disappointed writer's string of anonymously ominous postcards, Griffin Mill, a powerful Hollywood movie studio executive, commits a senseless murder and then takes up with his victim's girlfriend. Tolkin, himself a screenwriter, squishes this meagre story into his lead character's brain, where it becomes a minor league Dostoevskian psychological adventure, with the interesting subtext that a production executive's success leads not only to guilt and paranoia but to existential murder. Tolkin's bemused view of Hollywood is curt and bloodless yet hardly original, but he does have a keen perception of its various battle strategies. There's a happy ending, which the Hays Office wouldn't have liked, but Hollywood in the 1980s just might. David Bartholomew, NYPL Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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