Siccing the Vengeful Goddess of Doom Upon Hollywood
By titling her new mystery “The Revenge of Kali-Ra” (Mysterious Press, $22, 229 pages) and dedicating it “affectionately and respectfully” to the memory of Sax Rohmer and H. Rider Haggard (among others), the witty novelist K.K. Beck sets us up for a playful spoof of those writers of the purple page. She delivers that in spades, along with a gleeful evisceration of today’s Hollywood, where youth must be served . . . and served . . . and served, and a welcome skewering of such unpleasant facets of 21st century life as spin, buzz and avaricious lawyers.
Here’s the premise: Back in the ‘20s, author and voluptuary Valerian Ricardo penned a series of florid adventures featuring the evil “Queen of Doom,” Kali-Ra. Out of print for decades, an ancient copy of one of these overripe yarns overrides the short attention span of Nadia Wentworth, a young movie actress more bankable than Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts combined. When word spreads of Nadia’s desire to star in a “Titanic”-sized Kali-Ra film epic, all sorts of folks emerge from the mists surrounding Ricardo’s shade, among them the author’s widow, a great-grandnephew, a strangely prescient beach bunny, a vodka-swilling British screenwriter, a star-struck academic and several bungling representatives of a Robert Vescoesque entrepreneur hiding out in the Caribbean.
As Beck’s clever story structure has it, all of them wind up at the actress’ lavish, rococo Beverly Hills estate, “an ‘Arabian Nights’ sort of house surrounded by dense and fragrant gardens,” in danger from homicidal intruders, possibly including Kali-Ra herself. It’s up to Melanie Oakley, Nadia’s resourceful assistant and the novel’s protagonist and sole voice of sanity, to keep the loons and greedheads happy, the film production on track and the leading lady in one piece. It’s great fun, enhanced by breathless segments from the original Ricardo canon, chapter titles like “The Thing in the Shrubbery,” and an especially appropriate dust jacket designed by Richard Fahey.
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It’s been 25 years since Robert B. Parker’s famous private eye Spencer undertook his first assignment--the recovery of “The Godwulf Manuscript” for a Boston university. Since then, author and sleuth have simplified their styles to a point where plotting has become the merest of excuses for Spencer and his friends and enemies to engage in entertaining banter. The new “Hush Money” (Putnam, $22.95, 320 pages) is a continuation in that direction, despite the fact that Parker has put his durable shamus to work on two separate cases simultaneously.
The more interesting one finds Spencer, at the behest of best pal Hawk, poking into the reason why a young African American professor has been denied tenure by his university. Was the decision racist, homophobic or, possibly, academic? Not much chance of the last, especially since a gay activist rumored to be the prof’s paramour has gone on the big sleep.
There are several engaging sociological aspects to this investigation, and it’s particularly fitting to have the sleuth celebrate his 25th year back on campus. The second case, requested by Spencer’s best gal Susan, involves the stalking of one of her old schoolgirl chums. There’s not much substance to this one, except that the victim develops a crush on our hero and begins stalking him. The two things that have remained constant throughout Spencer’s relatively long career are his intolerance for the pretentious and the self-important, and his winning way of deflating them with a well-aimed wisecrack. Fans will be happy to discover that both are in ample evidence in “Hush Money.”
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The Times reviews mysteries every other week. Next week: Rochelle O’Gorman on audio books.