Welcome to my perfumed garden

Another review for simon_saysuk  - many thanks again for the free book which I adored and highly recomend.

A fantastically enjoyable read filled to the foaming brim with pathetic, lonely, evil, hilariously funny, believable people.

Daniel Depp clearly knows his landscape and his characters personally; you can practically smell the smog and the petrol fumes, see the heat-haze rising from the black top. The sleaze and the glamour – and occasionally, the terror - of the movie world is described in such hateful detail, you’re practically living in Bobby Dye’s trailer, being assaulted by his self-loathing and anger.

Spandau’s a fabulous character. I enjoyed his quiet self-confidence and cynicism; he’s the reality check that holds everything together – but Terry owns it, totally. He has all the best dialogue:

“It could be worse. You could’ve let him have his way standing up in the lavatory.” She gave him an angry look since this was exactly what she’d done.
“…I want a drink.”
“You’ll be in mourning for your lost honour, and I wouldn’t presume to intrude upon it,” Terry said to her.

The low-key, downbeat final ending took me by surprise – very not-Hollywood and thoroughly splendid - but I'd really love to know what happened to Potts. His was the one loose end I really cared about.

4 1/2 out of 5. 
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Cross posted to booky_talk,  goodreads and Amazon

Flist - who do we know who could play this character? From p.142:

'Terry McQuinn was five feet six inches tall. He had bright blue eyes and brown curly hair and JRR Tolkien was one of the few things in life that made sense to him. People indeed sometimes said that he looked like a Hobbit'.

If you ever get to read this book, I promise you'll enjoy putting our lad in this role. I know I did. ::she smiled knowingly::