Once-failed screenwriter and failing private detective Ellis Dunaway is given a second chance at writing a Miami Vice reboot for actor Urs Schreiber, who also needs a second chance after being “cancelled.” No sooner does Ellis start talks with Netflix than Urs’s agent, Larry Price, is shot dead in the street and Urs is accused of the crime. Using his limited PI skills inherited from his superstar detective father, Ellis aims to prove Urs didn’t kill his agent. At the same time, a serial killer is on a rampage throughout LA—shooting victims at random—and anybody could be next.
Satire and mystery-thriller elements combine in Keith Edward Vaughn’s BAD ACTOR, a novel with humor, an absorbing setting, and a compelling protagonist. Ellis’s sobriety seemingly reveals to him only the seedy and idiotic, from egotistical B-listers and smug wannabes to incompetent hitmen and vicious drug dealers. Interviewing these quirky characters in Hollywood’s underground party scene tests Ellis’s patience, as well as his desire to stay clean and sober. It also offers up hilarity and edge-of-your-seat suspense, as when a “five foot two and five eighths” blackbelt threatens to kill Ellis with his bare hands if he doesn’t find his missing money.
Ellis’s wit shines in both his dialogue and his introspection, as when he “only trusted the ‘anonymous’ aspect of the sobriety program as far as he could pick up the Porsche and throw it.” Others’ remarks similarly diagnose his idiosyncrasies, such as one character’s claim that “Ellis has a special talent for living in the past” when they see him continually attempting to revive his dead father’s shuttered PI business.
Caricatures are often part and parcel of satirical fiction. Of the ones here, the crooked cops and narcissistic TV producers are used to underline corruption in law enforcement and Hollywood. Unfortunately, hyper-liberal non-binary people of color fail to evolve beyond the butt of a joke, including a screenwriter with “a pierced septum and a pink mohawk” who says to Ellis, “I know you’re not trying to tell me my place. You’re out of your fuckin’ mind if you think I’m gonna let you bully me.” Swelling bosoms and off-color jokes abound to various levels of success.
That notwithstanding, the world of the novel sparkles with the blinking lights and deflated Rudolphs of hot Los Angeles at Christmastime. A repetitive pharmaceutical commercial that gets stuck in Ellis’s head also complements the novel’s decisive sense of place as an underbelly full of small-time actors desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame. With biting wit, BAD ACTOR proves a thrilling noir that continues a promising series.
A blend of mystery-thriller and satire, Keith Edward Vaughn’s BAD ACTOR is a rollickingly funny and immersive novel with an acerbic, recovering alcoholic protagonist.
~ Aimee Jodoin for IndieReader