From Publishers Weekly
This is the story of a 1940s Hollywood child star who resurfaces in the '90s as bag lady in Detroit, and of the screenwriter who accidentally rediscovers her.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Recovering from his wife's sudden death, Hollywood screenwriter Jack Broderick (the hero of Dunne's last novel, The Red White and Blue, LJ 4/15/87) flies to Detroit to research story ideas. In a Michigan trailer park, he discovers a coupon-clipping bag lady named Melba Mae Toolate who claims to have been Blue Tyler, one of the biggest child movie stars of the 1940s. Melba tells Broderick her life story, focusing on her scandalous liaison with Jacob King, a flamboyant gangster and Las Vegas visionary modeled on Bugsy Siegel. Playland offers a compelling film noir vision of Tinseltown during the war years, with cameo appearances by real-life personalities such as Walter Winchell. Unfortunately, Warren Beatty's recent film Bugsy covered much the same ground, and long sections of the book read like a remake of that movie. In the end, it is Dunne's colorful minor characters who hold the reader's interest. Recommended for larger collections of Hollywood fiction.
--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law School Lib., Los AngelesCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.