Review: The Long Shot

The Long Shot by Monette Paul

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While Monette can definitely write a pretty sentence, the density of the language gives the book a hazy, turgid atmosphere that sometimes obscures the decent Hollywood murder mystery at the book's core. Still, it's an insightful, human story, with much to say about the nature of fame and fortune. I wished the book had been sexier, though -- the main characters are all widows or aged, who seem to have abandoned hope of sexual or romantic redemption. Ultimately, it was a sad and chilly read, rife with a kind of agoraphobic fatalism, although the offhand mystery kept me reading through the over-literary, downbeat thickets of language.