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Title: Dead Celebrities
Author: Christopher Calix
Narrator: Joshua Macrae
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs
Language: English
Release date: 05-09-16
Publisher: Lethe Press
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 9 votes
Genres: Fiction, Gay & Lesbian
Publisher's Summary:
Carter Calhoun was once a Hollywood legend, an agent both loved and loathed by stars and studio executives alike. But then the suicide of his lover and star client, matinee idol Sam Madison, sent Carter to the bottom of the bottle. Carter became a housebound recluse. Now, years later, new evidence reveals Sam may have been murdered and Carter emerges from seclusion to find his killer. The hunt will take him from the soundstages of Hollywood to a trailer park in Malibu to the mansions of Bel Air.
Carter, struggling against addiction and bouts of agoraphobia, must navigate through a new and unfamiliar world where anyone can be famous and everyone has an agenda - and a secret. For Carter, solving Sam's murder offers hope of redemption - as long as he can stay alive.
Members Reviews:
A contemporary gay spin on classic Hollywood noir.
I really liked this book. No, I really enjoyed reading this book. Not exactly the same thing. This is a debut novel, and the author is, apparently, young as well as talented.
One weird fact is that the main characterâs name, Carter Calhoun, never appears in the book until the last page. Other than that, this is a beautifully crafted homage to Hollywood noir novels. Itâs gay noir, with a complex murder mystery woven in and out of a vivid, cynical depiction of Hollywood and the industry that rules the fantasies of the USA along with a good part of the rest of the world.
The closest recent parallel in my mind to âDead Celebritiesâ is not a book, but the long-running TV series âEntourage,â which I watched with grim determination through every season to the bitter end. The difference there is that âEntourageâ depicted a Hollywood with no gay people, which seemed even more bizarre than the one Calix paints for us. Everything else, however, is right there. I think my intense dislike and disrespect for Hollywood came into focus because of âEntourage,â and Calix offers nothing to sweeten that image.
The never-named first person narrator, Carter Calhoun, is an arch, WASPy Ari Gold, who re-emerges from his decade-long seclusion in the Hollywood Hills to solve a murder that had long been thought to be a suicide. The narrative moves neatly back and forth between the present-day plot and a flashback plot revolving around Calhounâs onetime client and sometime lover Sam Madison.
There are precious few people that generate any sympathy in this book, and I donât think thatâs accidental. Calhoun's housekeeper and friend Lana (reminding me of Thelma Ritter with her kindness and smart commentary) is the only fully caring human in sight. Even the tragic central character, Sam Madison, is so duplicitous and manipulative that I never could completely embrace him, although Calix gives us a rich sense of his compelling beauty and complex character. The best description of Madisonâs personality is presented thusly: âHeâs a careless f*****g savage. But heâs also completely nave and innocent.â
For all its wry, smart gay noir storyline, this is not a book that Iâd say would make any gay people happy with the way theyâre depicted. For that matter, bisexuals might find this book bordering on defamatory. Only Calhoun himself, by the end, managed to pull me over onto his side.