Finished reading Steven Bochco's "Death by Hollywood" and came away thinking that it was a pretty nice bit of fluff. Mr. Bochco is the co-creator of Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue. I suppose if you like those particular aspects of the popular culture oeuvre, this book might be fascinating. It's written in a bit of a clichéd hardbitten gumshoe tone - the narrator is a Hollywood agent to the 'stars,' and seems to revel in a touch of cynicism. The whole book is a (fictionalized) account of the alternate universe that Hollywood apparently is - I can't say for sure as I've never been there. By all accounts, though, this book reinforces the stereotypes of the superficial world out there.

The storyline is pleasantly sprinkled with wrinkles, although by the last third of the book, I started to find myself not being surprised anymore. Maybe that's a strength of the book - the events and actions are warped by general standards of morality, yet, by that last third, I as the reader became jaded to the world, and ceased to be surprised by the machinations of the characters. The book's conclusion is gratifying in that it clearly marks the end of the story - Bochco appears to have had a clear idea of where the story was going and how to end it, and got it there in due course.

The characters - jaded police officers, grasping starlets, Latin lovers with irrepressible sexual drives, self satisfied socialites, flavour-of-the-day actors with delusions of grandeur - are all archetypes, and that lets Bochco off from really having to develop them. That's not to say that Bochco is sloppy or remiss in the development - he's just able to move the story along a little quicker.