From Amazon.com
A French television producer putting together an affectionate documentary series about famous show business blondes hires a detective agency to track down one of his personal favorites--a singer named Gloria Stella, whose brief burst of fame was cut short when she was jailed for pushing her lover off a roof. Now Gloria has changed her name and her appearance, she hides out in seedy seaside town and is quietly going crazy. That's the endearing premise of this wry and offbeat thriller written by popular French author Jean Echenoz and translated with perfect pitch by Mark Polizzotti. If you'd like to see what thriller readers in other countries are getting excited about these days, here's an easy way into another culture. Other books by Echenoz available in paperback:
Cherokee,
Double Jeopardy.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
From Library Journal
When a television documentary producer sends a team of private investigators to locate ex-singer Gloria Stella, she flees, leaving the befuddled group always two steps behind her as she hops from one country to the next. Imbuing his novels with a decidedly film noir essence is French author Echenoz's (Lac, LJ 10/15/95) stock-in-trade, but the writing here is neither clever nor insightful enough to justify a vignette-like structure where nothing much happens despite plenty of atmosphere. Nor is it likely to keep the reader turning the pages. This short novel eventually grinds to a halt when the detectives finally catch up with Gloria in the final chapters, which could be called anticlimactic if the story had any arc to it at all. Readers expecting big laughs will be sorely disappointed; most libraries can pass on this one.?Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
