From Publishers Weekly
Raymond Chandler's mean streets were never like those traversed in this new satirical novel by the author of Shooting Elvis. Nina Zero, Mary Alice Baker, is paroled after serving five years for blowing up LAX airport by mistake. Starting a new life for herself, she's going to earn two thousand dollars by marrying, so that her new English husband can obtain a green card. There's more: when members of a heavy-metal band called Death Row are electrocuted in a hotel hot tub, she sells pictures of their demise to a one-man photo agency and signs on as a paparazza. At last, she seems to have found her calling. But someone is killing L.A. paparazzi. As if that weren't enough, her husband's body is found beaten and stabbed. Properly enraged, Nina resolves to track down the killer herself. There's the expected unexpected ending, but half the fun is getting there in this noirish ramble across L.A.'s seedy underbelly, most notably Nina's deadpan narration ("Frank was one of those guys who could take a bite at the beginning of a sentence, chew through the middle and lunge for another bite without so much as a comma to separate mouthfuls"). Along the way Eversz manages to satirize rock groups, television, the glitterati and California correctional facilities, among other tempting targets. While the satirical overtones are omnipresent, the violence is a little too visceral to take lightly, and the overall effect a little too close to reality particularly in the wake of September 11 for comfort.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Eversz's hip thrillers sizzle with flashes of mordant wit and merciless mocking of Hollywood pretensions.
Shooting Elvis (1996) introduced baby photographer turned revenging she-devil Nina Zero, who's back on the street after serving hard time for a spectacular crime spree. One man got her into that bizarre mess, and now another gets her into a whole new world of violent trouble. Her green-card marriage to Brit Gabe, a paparazzo, or "princess killer," is supposed to be all business, but Nina, who quickly joins his despised, dangerous, but lucrative profession, falls in love only to become a widow hell-bent on finding and punishing her husband's killer. Her pursuit takes her into the weird, vampirish realm of the paparazzi, the tabloid racket, and the sanctum sanctorum of L.A.'s richest and most decadent stars and real-estate pirates. The ensuing kinky-sex blackmail plot is neatly done, but it's Eversz's killer sense of humor and Nina's extreme rage, toughness, and quest for justice that make this smart and stylish mystery hum.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
