Let's All Kill Constance - by Ray Bradbury (Paperback)

About the Book

Mystery and murder abound in this latest Bradbury noir tale--the story of an aging movie queen marked for death, and the unnamed screenwriter and his trusted sidekick who try to save her.

From the Back Cover

On a dismal evening in the previous century, an unnamed writer in Venice, California, answers a furious pounding at his beachfront bungalow door and again admits Constance Rattigan into his life. An aging, once-glamorous Hollywood star, Constance is running in fear from something she dares not acknowledge -- and vanishes as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the narrator two macabre books: twin listings of the Tinseltown dead and soon to be dead, with Constance's name included among them. And so begins an odyssey as dark as it is wondrous, as the writer sets off in a broken-down jalopy with his irascible sidekick Crumley to sift through the ashes of a bygone Hollywood -- a graveyard of ghosts and secrets where each twisted road leads to grim shrines and shattered dreams ... and, all too often, to death.

Review Quotes

"Ray Bradbury's writing remains as rich and ripe as ever." - Washington Post Times-Herald
"Bradbury remains a conjurer." - Time magazine
"Ray Bradbury remains a master storyteller, and his writing still cracks my hat." - Chicago Tribune
"An irresistible tale which will be in demand, since it's only Bradbury's second novel since 1963. " - Library Journal
"Pleasantly weird...it seems 'life' and 'death' are relative terms in a world where the only lasting death is being forgotten." - New York Times Book Review
"This book is more about mood than plot, raising larger questions of identity while providing loving descriptions of crepuscular Hollywood landmarks...recommended for all ...those in love with long-ago Hollywood and its lost souls." - Library Journal
"Madness, blackmail, murder and mayhem spell tricks and treats as Bradbury toes the fine line between reality and illusion." - Publishers Weekly
"With postmodern panache, Bradbury draws attention to the fact that we are reading fiction...[Bradbury's] hilarious knack for literalizing the figurative shows itself at its finest." - Los Angeles Times
"[Let's All Kill Constance] is a meditation on the eruptions of old age, on memory and on failed and realized aspirations. . . Bradbury ... is so engaging in part because he lacks pretensions." - Chicago Tribune
"Bradbury, a legend in his own time, seems never to run out of creative inspiration. [Let's All Kill Constance] is a loving, tongue-in-cheek tribute to early Hollywood. . . [a] whirlwind of staccato dialogue, puns and references to old Hollywood and Chandler-era noir. Bradbury's giddy pleasure is infectious." - Publishers Weekly
"SF legend Bradbury miraculously produces a solution that honors both the mystery formula and his own deeper roots in fantasy." - Kirkus Reviews