FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Earthquake Weather, Terrill Lee Lankford mined his own experiences as a player in the glamorous, ruthless movie business to create a West Coast noir hailed by T. Jefferson Parker as "part Raymond Chandler and part Nathanael West." Now get ready for another thrill ride down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams -- where a wrong turn can lead to a very dead end.
Out of work in The Industry, Mark Hayes decides he's desperate enough to hitch his wagon to the dubious star of Clyde McCoy, a hard-drinking veteran screenwriter known only too well for being difficult. Clyde has secured the backing to produce his latest script, a noir homage called "Blonde Lightning." With a popular action star and a sexy up-and-comer on board in the lead roles, he's cleaning up his act, dusting off his director's chair, and is determined to make the picture happen.
For investing the last of his savings into the production, Mark gets the title of associate producer. However, his real job is on-set troubleshooter -- his duties ranging from keeping a randy old character actor on a short leash to caring for and feeding some very high-maintenance investors. But the real trouble starts when a crewmember is nearly electrocuted. Clyde suspects sabotage, compliments of Mace Thornburg, an industry bottom-feeder with a grudge against nearly everyone in Hollywood, including Clyde's martial-arts-actress girlfriend. After she's almost killed in another suspicious accident, Clyde and Mark resort to drastic measures to exact revenge. But when the payback plot takes an unscripted turn, the deadly drama is suddenly no longer in front of the cameras.
Now, trapped like a pawn in a classic double-cross scenario, Mark realizes the only way out is for him and Clyde to wade deeper into a violent nightmare of treachery, lies, and murder as black and inescapable as the La Brea tar pits. It's a trip Clyde seems more than willing to take . . . and that Mark discovers is part of the high price for finally getting his name on the silver screen.
PRAISE FOR BLONDE LIGHTNING
A wicked read on the biz
ONE of the more memorable specimens in Terrill Lee Lankford's 2004 L.A. sleazearium, Earthquake Weather, was Clyde McCoy, a third-string script doctor. A man perpetually trying to find a toehold in Hollywood, Clyde is the kind of guy who, upon learning of the murder of protagonist Mark Hayes' roommate, blithely asks the distraught man if he'd like to read one of his scripts. A character too good to let go, Clyde plus Mark and a host of other Hollywood poseurs have been revived in Lankford's "Blonde Lightning."
The novel opens exactly six months after the '94 Northridge quake, as Mark notes: "When you first get to Los Angeles, it does not take long to realize that the ground you walk on is untrustworthy, even when it is not moving underfoot." Mark's sense of unease stems not just from his roommate Charity James' death or the Northridge aftershocks but from O.J. Simpson's slow-speed chase. which interrupts Mark's enjoyment of Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
It also puts him squarely in the path of Clyde, who wanders into Mark's favorite watering hole during the televised pursuit and offers to buy him a drink as a peace offering for being so insensitive. Given their history and Mark's observation that Clyde is "an onion with layers upon layers of façade," you would think Mark would have the good sense to go on the lam himself, but after Charity's funeral and losing his job as a "D-boy" or development boy when his boss is murdered, Mark wants a screen credit in the worst way. But is he willing to work for close to minimum wage as an associate producer/flunky on Clyde's independent film, "Blonde Lightning"?
Luckily for us he's willing to do that and a lot more. The result makes the novel "Blonde Lightning" not just another dose of murderous mayhem but a deeper and more disturbing meditation on Mark's love-hate relationship with the film industry. Informed by Lankford's experiences as a journeyman screenwriter-producer (his credits include 1988's "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers," reportedly filmed in five days for $58,000), Mark disses and dissects Hollywood's finest with gimlet-eyed dismay, from his boss' murderer fretting that the media hype surrounding Simpson will deflect attention from the auction of his movie rights to attendees at Charity's funeral who skip the service for the nosh-and-networking opportunities at the repast afterward.
In between the many acid-etched characterizations and spot-on descriptions of Hollywood hangouts is serious business — the making of "Blonde Lightning," Clyde's hommage to film noir.
For Mark, an associate producer credit is better than nothing, even if it means enduring Vince's fiancée-du-jour as a co-producer and a born-again-Christian investor whose major requirement is that Karen Black be cast to appease his fixated adult son.
But when Mace Thornburg, a PR hack with a grudge against Clyde's girlfriend and half of Hollywood starts harassing the couple and a string of deadly accidents involve Clyde and those around him, the question is not whether Thornburg will be killed but who won't want to score this ultimate credit.
Originally envisioned with Earthquake Weather as one volume, "Blonde Lightning" stands on its own as a wicked cool read and further solidifies the early praise about Lankford as a latter-day successor to Nathanael West and Raymond Chandler. With its structure cleverly mirroring the filmmaking process and its behind-the-scenes dish and details, Blonde Lightning will teach readers more about independent film production than a year at AFI.
But for all its wit and wisecracks, the novel is also a paean to films and the people who make them, the ones who don't make the front page of Variety or the Hollywood Reporter.
Paula L. Woods, LA Times
I suspect that this is true of every single person in Terrill Lankford's powerful new novel Blonde Lightning. Each person in his way suffers from the same need -- they need more. More money, more sex, more power, more dominance over the people they despise.
In simple terms, Blonde Lightning is about Mark Hayes, the sporadically employed Hollywood executive we first met in Lankford's previous novel -- the excellent Earthquake Weather -- finally finding a gig again, albeit with one Clyde McCoy, a burned-out screenwriter who is now ready to direct a film that will be his comeback after alienating way too many people in LA.
The production is troubled from the beginning. There is the character Mark has to babysit to keep out of trouble; the investors who need reassurance and hand-holding; and at least one sleazebag who just may be a killer.
The storyline works just fine. Lankford has learned a great deal about plotting from all the screenplays he's written. He sets land mines up for us to step on and we step on each one. Very nice work here.
As far as the psychology goes I suppose the natural comparison is to Nathanael West. He gives us a cast that has one big thing in common--most of them fail (most likely out of fear) to face up to what they have become. Self-delusion is just as powerful a drug as meth or coke. They're in some kind of group therapy session where every utterance is a lie to a greater or lesser degree.
Lankford deals with all this in a decidedly non-Nathanael Westian voice. No formal American English here. Even more surprisngly, no familiar noir tropes, either. Lankford, by foregoing all the cliches of Hollywood crime novels, speaks to us in a laguage that sounds like Holden Caulfield at thirty-five. Holden is no longer naive but what a price he's paid for his knowledge. His Mark Hayes is now The Catcher in The Wry. He acknowledges his misery; he just can't seem to do anything about it. He's too self-conscious to pretend to be a tough guy; instead he chooses irony, wryness, to hide out in.
The book is packed with glimpses of the real Hollywood as seen from the B-movie level. It is also packed with what Greene had in mind with "He was only watching happiness from close to instead of from far away." All the dudes you know with big cars and big houses just gotta be happy, right? We meet a number of successful people here, too, it's just that the unsuccessful people don't seem to realize that everybody's mutually unhappy.
This is a serious novel written with skill, passion and a quiet truth that pervades every page. It's also an exciting puzzler. Terrill Lankford is a major new voice in crime fiction."
Ed Gorman, Mystery Scene
"A sleuthing Hollywood 'creative executive' takes on a different role: accessory to murder.
The day that O.J. Simpson's Bronco upstages the NBA finals, eternally uncredited screenwriter Mark Hayes runs into Clyde McCoy, a neighbor and ex-friend (Earthquake Weather, 2004). Clyde's new screenplay, "Blonde Lightning," has interested Vince Timlin, who wants to produce and star in it if they can raise the right amount of money. Clyde's planning to direct the film, and he wants to pay Mark peanuts to serve as associate producer and watch his back. The assignment turns into quite a challenge once Clyde's girlfriend, martial-arts star Emily Woolrich, defends her man by beating up a bodyguard attached to Mace Thornburg, a sleazy manager convinced he deserves half of Emily's income because he introduced her to some people. Leaving behind his new girlfriend Tracy, an unhappily married actress-turned-gallery owner, Mark agrees to join the crew, and that's when the real fun begins. Somebody, presumably Mace, gets busy playing tricks during the shoot: sending black roses, dead chickens and horse manure COD. The mischief, at first subordinated to all the million other things that can go wrong when you're shooting a picture, eventually grows beyond the nuisance stage -- grows so threatening, in fact, that Clyde considers proactive counter-measures. Even when the cast reluctantly embraces criminal associates, and then criminal actions, though, the author keeps the focus on the ways this lawless madness grows out of the perfectly lawful madness attendant on any low-budget shoot. The fate of Mark's sole Hollywood credit provides the perfect punch line.
A knowing portrait of Hollywood as it sinks to ever-lower depths, and proof of Tracy's maxim: "Movies don't make you immortal -- they just make you into a ghost."
Kirkus
"Following his peripheral involvement in the murder of a studio executive (Earthquake Weather, 2004), Hollywood producer wanna-be Mark Hayes is still struggling on the edges of the film world. Things may be looking up, though, if he and his partner, Peckinpah-like writer-director Clyde McCoy, ever get their low-budget indie film into the can. Plenty of roadblocks stand in the way: the likelihood that McCoy will hit the bottle yet again; the escalating, on-set sabotage attempts of a crazed agent; and McCoy's disaster-waiting-to-happen idea of hiring a hitman to deal with the agent. The disaster eventually does happen in a bullet-riddled, over-the-top finale, but along the way, Lankford treats readers to a gritty, detail-rich portrait of how a movie gets made, from development to distribution. That the filmmaking process parallels the playing out of the crime drama in a steadily more ironic way adds an extra level of sly entertainment, much in the manner of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty and Be Cool (the latter, a bad movie but a good book)." Bill Ott, Booklist
"Terrill Lee Lankford's excellent Blonde Lightning is the follow-up to last year's Earthquake Weather, a fine Hollywood satire.
Would-be mogul Mark Hayes has returned, and his love-hate relationship with showbiz is just as sharp and darkly funny as before.
Producing a low-budget film with alcoholic director Clyde McCoy, Hayes risks his life savings in a last-ditch effort to make it big in Tinseltown. But the project seems cursed from the start.
When their leading lady is nearly killed in an "accident," McCoy suspects the sleazy agent who had once threatened her life. Desperate to finish the film, Hayes and McCoy seek to eliminate the threat, no matter the cost.
Lankford is both a veteran filmmaker and a gifted mystery
novelist, and he uses his expertise in both areas to craft a book that gives an inside look at the filmmaking process while entertaining readers with a rich and suspenseful story."
David J. Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times
"Nobody writes with more eerie precision about the lizard-infested undergrowth of the independent film business than Terrill Lee Lankford. In Dan Tana's pleasantly non-trendy Hollywood steakhouse, a would-be film magnate offers money to writer/director Clyde McCoy for a piece of his upcoming cheapo thriller, “Blonde Lightning” - but there's a catch about some foreign rights: “I need Benelux, Italy and Germany,” the investor insists.
'Germany?' Clyde was horrified. 'We can't give you Germany. Germany is huge.'
'I need it. Or I can't put up the money. Germany is the main reason I want to be involved with this film. I need to fulfill a contract there… I'm not as interested in the revenues as I am in being able to deliver Germany. It's the key to completion funds on my two other films. They want three pictures or nothing.'
Clyde saves the day, and the deal, by suggesting that the investor can have Germany - as long as McCoy and his producer/star, a once semi-famous film and TV actor, get a piece of the action. Mark Hayes, the ambitious but soft-headed hero of Lankford's Earthquake Weather (where he and McCoy met after the 1994 Northridge quake cracked open their San Fernando Valley apartment building) watches the scene and takes notes. If all goes well, he'll be hired as associate producer on “Blonde Lightning,” and maybe some day he'll be talking about Germany himself.
Of course, all doesn't go well. Clyde has (along with a serious drinking problem) a ladyfriend, Emily, a successful stunt woman and martial arts expert who has managed to earn the hatred of a very nasty piece of Hollywood flotsam. When a suspicious accident almost kills Emily, Clyde and Mark strike back in a violent gesture that threatens to send them both to jail or
the graveyard. There's not much glamour in Lankford's version of the movie industry, but there is a truckload of suspense, anger, frustration and sadness - as well as enough eating and drinking to make you break any diet."
Chicago Tribune, Dick Adler
"One of the best books I read last year was Terrill Lee Lankford's Earthquake Weather. The sequel will be published soon, and anyone who loved the first book will want to read Blonde Lightning, because it's even better.
Mark Hayes is still on the fringes of the movie business after being cleared of murder, and he joins forces with writer/director Clyde McCoy to make a low-budget film noir called Blonde Lightning. The story of how this movie comes about, from start to finish, furnishes the skeleton of this novel, but it's much more than that, as Mark has to grapple with plenty of emotional and moral issues. When someone tries to kill him and Clyde, things get worse. When they try to deal with that threat, things get really bad.
This book is not just about the plot, though. It's about the fear of death, and the compromises between art and business, and the power of both love and friendship. It's about striving for a bit of immortality in a very mortal world. Lankford is one of the few authors who can manage to be hilariously funny, heartbreakingly poignant, and bone-chillingly dark in the same book -- sometimes in the same chapter. Blonde Lightning is a fine, fine book, and although I just finished it, I expect it to linger in my mind for a long time."
James R. Reasoner, Rough Edges
"Maybe it's because I read them back-to-back but I do view Blonde Lighning and its predecessor, Earthquake Weather, as one big long and extremely entertaining novel of Hollywood sleaze, social observation and murder. Lankford offers up the perfect balance of social observation, wisecracks and moral ambiguity without the faux-ponderousness that infects too many Hollywood novels. This saga's done, but it would be great to see many more from him."
Sarah Weinman, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
Author Terrill Lee Lankford provides an insider glimpse into Hollywood and the movie business. Like the fictional film from which it takes its title, Blonde Lightning is a noir work, darkly amusing, and showing the sinister side of human nature. Mark surprises both himself and the reader with what he finds himself capable of, but as narrator, never abandons his wry humor. Like Simpson's ride in his white bronco, Blonde Lightning is bizarre but mesmerizing.
Susan Illis, New Mystery Reader
Blonde Lightning is TL Lankford's follow up novel to Earthquake Weather. The setting is Hollywood during OJ Simpson's low speed chase memorialized in our collective memory banks as a prelude to travesty. Mark Hayes has lost his job as a d-boy after the murder of his boss, but hopes to catch on with a low budget company making a film called "Blonde Lightning."
The heart of the story becomes the making of the movie on a shoestring budget. Lankford makes skillful use of his knowledge of filmmaking to produce a tense and enjoyable ride, the kind of story that gathers force as it progresses. I'll skip the plot details to avoid spoilers, but this novel delivers the goods with a resolution of the Mark Hayes story as a cautionary tale.
The story's disfigured beauty provides Mark with a sembalnce of a love life as well as central metaphor for the author's view of the movie business. The cast of secondary characters is excellent, made plausible by the world they inhabit. My only complaint is that the book felt short. Lankford's guiding sense of understatement leads to a number of summary paragraphs, perhaps a vestige of his days writing coverage for screenplays. His passion for the subject prevails, making this his finest novel to date.
David Thayer, Collected Miscellany
