Death by Hollywood

July 28, 2003
This clever debut novel by the creator of Hill St. Blues, NYPD Blue
and other hit TV shows is as smooth and rich as the name-brand Chardonnays preferred by many of the book's fabulously conflicted Tinseltown characters. Narrator Eddie Jelko, an A-level agent, sets the stage by declaring, "It's a tough town and a tough business, and if you don't watch your step either one'll kill you, which I guess is what this story is actually about." Eddie's screenwriter client Bobby Newman's career is fading fast: he can't get a handle on a long-overdue screenplay, his drinking is out of control and his wife is having an affair with a sleazebag director. One drunken evening, Bobby sits down with his Bushnell telescope and spies on a couple making love in a nearby house. When they've finished, they begin to argue, and the woman, whom Bobby recognizes as a wealthy socialite, hauls off and kills her lover with an acting trophy. In any other town, Bobby would report the crime, but instead he sees it as both the solution to his writer's block and a vehicle to the top of the Hollywood heap. The story proceeds apace; the twists and turns are predictable but amusing, the agent jokes are funny and the O. Henry–style ending ties everything up with an attractive bow. A publisher's letter and star-treatment interview with Bochco attempt to add weight to this pleasing, slick-as-silk fiction, but there's no need for such addenda. The book is fast, fun, sexy and delivers plenty of inside dope on movie stars and their wacky lives. That's enough for millions of readers who aren't interested in slogging their way through War and Peace. Relax, guys, it's gonna be a hit. Agent, Mort Janklow. (Sept. 16)Forecast:Television watchers who have followed Bochco's career since
Columbo will relish the roman à clef elements as the author settles a few scores, and major promotional moves by Random House will get books moving fast and early.

August 1, 2003
This one has " insider" written all over it. A crime novel about a screenwriter written by a legendary screenwriter and producer of cop shows (" Hill Street Blues," " NYPD Blue"). The premise works some of the same soil as the film " Adaptation": a screenwriter witnesses a murder and, instead of telling the police, makes friends with the killer and writes a screenplay about the crime--from the inside, directing events in real life and then adapting them to his script. Reality and adaptation come into conflict, of course, leaving the writer caught in a kind of limbo between life on the page and in the world. It doesn't help that a Columbo-like cop (Bochco's first success was as a writer for the Peter Falk series) has his own ideas about how the screenplay should be developed. Bochco stage-manages the plot trickery effectively, and he makes the most of his crotchety narrator, agent Eddie Jelko, whose ongoing commentary on Hollywood pretensions is a phlegmatic delight ("Linda Paulson's around 40 years old, except for her nose, which is around 22, and her tits, which are 12"). The story's cinematic underpinnings are a little too evident, however: character development is sketchy at best, and the action zooms from scene to scene as if Bochco was worried about finishing each chapter before the light ran out. Still, it's all good fun, especially for Hollywood watchers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)