“Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen” is a mystery book by Sarah James.
What I liked about the book:
It really captured the feel of the Hollywood Canteen - meaning the
canteen itself. There was some name dropping, but that’s to be expected
because the canteen started out as a good effort and became, sadly, a
place for stars to be seen - and for Hollywood to pat itself on the back
for doing a job for the war effort. However, I honestly believe that
Ms. Davis and Mr. Garfield didn’t plan for it to evolve that way when
they came up with the idea.
The bitting and bitterness and wittiness of the Algonquin Round Table -
portrayed in this book book as the Ambassador’s Club. I’ll never be a
huge Dorothy Parker fan, but her one liners were cutting, bitter, and
spot on … rather like those of Fiona Farris.
The cover of this book - it’s gorgeous and if I saw it at my library, I’d pick it up for the cover alone.
What was meh:
The pacing - yes, there needed to be build-up … and a fall down … and a
savior, but the plot at times moved so slowly toward the direction of
first the murder and then again solving said murder.
The Ambassador Group - while the wit was there, so often there was so
much bitterness that I had to wonder “why do these people consider
themselves friends? Why do they hang out with each other? Maybe they
have a different definition of the word ‘friend’?”
Characters - While I had an easy time keeping the female characters, for
the most part, separate - the two man men (Vic and Jack) I had problems
keeping separate. While the two men did work together, I don’t think
that was the only reason why. I wanted something more to the overall
relationships in this book as even at the end, I still felt what I knew
about each character was rather surface-level interesting. Also, while
the main female character followed a couple out to California, I really
felt like like the couple she followed could’ve been replaced by a
single character. I didn’t care for the couple … separately or together.
The “who done it” - I wasn’t surprised by who was revealed to be the
murderer, but I was disappointed because it seemed like such a sad
reason to murder someone.
What was not so great:
I was hoping for vague “Thin Man” vibes. Instead I read a book where a
woman after one week manages to get herself accepted by a group of
friends who have been together for 20 years and they start spilling
secrets to her like nobody’s business. That seemed a little bit too
unreal for me. Also, this book became a bit too cookie cutter at times -
focusing on little things that ended up being red herrings or on the
shady side of Hollywood.
For me, this book is about a 3.5 read. I so wanted to enjoy it more than I did.
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