The Devil Raises His Own

In The Ice Harvest, Phillips showed he was a whiz at blending action and comedy in one unputdownable package. With this book, he succeeds brilliantly again. It’s 1916 and the movie industry is just building up steam when Bill Ogden opens his photography studio in seamy downtown Hollywood. His granddaughter is with him, having fled Kansas after braining her husband with a baseball bat. (He threatened to shoot her.) Lowlifes, grifters and movie wannabes surround them in a this-way/that-way string of botched adventures. A director aspires to greatness but settles for shooting sex flicks. His star, initially repulsed by appearing in a woman-on-woman film, orgasms on camera and soon wants to do more films. Her long-missing husband is now hunting her, and he discovers that homicide is an easy way to feather his nest. What’ll happen when he finds her? Complications pile up in a plot that has more zigs and zags than Tristram Shandy. The story seems to go off the rails from time to time but doesn’t really. It all comes together in a slam-bang ending.