You Hurt My Feelings is Flat and Dull

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (2023)

Directed, written, produced by Nicole Holofcener

A24, 93 minutes, R (entirely for F-bombs)

★

 

You Hurt My Feelings isn’t a terrible movie, merely a relentlessly flat one. Director Nicole Holofcener, also wrote and produced a movie about an overdone subject and failed to do anything new with it. How many flicks have you seen in which a character gets in trouble for telling a white lie that escalates into a black one? If the moral of this tale is “tell the truth or a lie will come to bite you,” I doubt you’ll be tempted to throw confetti into the air to celebrate such a unique revelation.

 

I saw this one in the “new to video” bin at the local library, had never heard of it, and took it home because I like actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She plays Beth, a successful memoirist who is married to Don (Tobias Menzies), a therapist. The two are so devoted to one another that they finish each other’s sentences, share their food, and order one ice cream cone between them. All of this is to the shock of their grossed out 23-year-old son Elliot (Owen Teague). One wonders how Elliot got to be 23 without previously noting said behavior. Beth has a bad case of creative paralysis, which is obvious to her, her publisher, and a rival firm–both of whom reject the manuscript. She’s inconsolable, so Don tries to console her by telling her that her critics are idiots and that she’s a wonderful writer. 

 

Poor Don. He’s an ineffective burnt-out therapist, but it’s his fetish for socks that does him in. After lunch with his brother-in-law Mark (Arian Mayed), who has just been fired from his acting job, they cross a New York City street and enter a sock shop, where Don confesses that Beth’s latest writing effort is lame. Unbeknownst to either, Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) go into the store, as Beth wants to surprise Don with a new pair of socks. She overhears Don’s remark and silently exits. She is crushed and is convinced that her husband is a liar who can no longer be trusted. Sarah tries to soothe things, but fumbles the effort.

 

Excuse me for being a heel, but this hardly seems like an earth-shattering, irreconcilable situation to me. Toe the line and deal with it, say I. Instead, Beth festers like a foot fungus, treats Don like a worn-out insole, and begins to wonder if their marriage is over. About the only thing that redeems this movie at all is that scenes of inept therapy, both Don’s and that of the marriage counselor, are pretty funny. It’s even funnier to imagine that in the Big Apple that such lame shrinks could stay in business long enough to pay the rent. I’m led to believe there are a lot more star therapists than sock stores in Manhattan, but whadda I know?

 

Will Don and Beth forgive each other? In a movie whose dramatic moment occurs in a sock shop, you can guarantee that this “comic drama” will err on the side of weak comedy rather than gut-wrenching drama. Of course they do. So why not pull up your… never mind. To top the shared ice cream cone with an over-sweet maraschino cherry, not only does Beth revise her new memoir to great acclaim, her n’er do well son Elliot churns out a successful play with a role for Mark.

 

I know I’m not supposed to look for Logic 101 in a comedy, but I didn’t buy a thing in You Hurt My Feelings. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has all the emotional affect of a zombie, and Menzies is more hangdog than Huckleberry. If the therapy hadn’t been so bad, I might have fallen asleep. You Hurt My Feelings is a bad title, a bad script, and bad direction. For the record, even the socks looked boring.

 

Rob Weir 

 

 

 

The Roses a Good Guilty Pleasure

 

 

THE ROSES (2025)

Directed by Jay Roach

Searchlight Pictures, 105 minutes, R (language, sexuality, violence)

★★★★★

 

The Roses is a British remake of the 1989 film War of the Roses, which starred Kathleen Turner and Michael Doulgas. Readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of remakes, but this one surpasses the original. It’s a rare occasion in which the Brits remade an American film rather than vice versa. That’s good news for viewers, as British actors are generally more skilled than American celebs.

 

Without getting bogged down in history, the title pays homage to a 30-year struggle over the English throne between two cadet branches of the Plantagenet family, the House of York (whose emblem was a white rose) and the House of Lancaster (red rose). If you care, the winner was the Tudor family. Neither The Roses nor The War of the Roses was about that bloody 15^th century struggle over the kingship, but both movies had plenty of vitriol and fireworks.

 

The Roses refer to a modern family, Ivy (Olivia Coleman), a talented chef wannabe, and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch), who hopes to become a major architect–two dreamers who were mad (made?) for each other. They meet in London, fall passionately in love, share their respective dreams of moving to the United States, marry, and ten years later, live in a spectacular home in Mendicino, California, with their twin children, Hattie and Roy. They exude the American Dream, aside from differing parenting skills: Ivy bribes the kids with gooey desserts and Theo is an exercise drill sergeant-as-dad. They have money, drink great wine, throw elaborate dinner parties, and have good friends, especially Amy (Kate McKinnon) and Barry (Andy Samberg), and Sally (Zoë Chao) and Rory (Jamie Demetriou).

 

They gather to celebrate Theo’s unveiling of the new naval history museum. It is truly spectacular, but it looks… well … a bit overdone, with its sweeping cantilevers and sail-like appendages. A freak tempest reduces the entire building and Theo’s career to rubble. At lightning speed, he is ridiculed as a dangerous egoist, becomes the butt of cutting jokes, and is blacklisted. The only question left is who gets sued. Ivy steps in and works like a plow horse to keep the family afloat. Theo has built her a nice restaurant, but to recover from the debt they are in, Ivy needs to upscale. A depressed, unemployed Theo passes his days drilling the twins into super-athlete shape. Soon, Ivy is a rising star in the food industry. (Make sure you’ve eaten before watching the film, lest you start stuffing sugar down your throat!) She’s on TV and magazine covers, is the toast of every city she visits, and opens new restaurants galore. Is Theo envious of her success? You bet your pencils and protractor he is.

 

Lionization notwithstanding, Ivy has become an absentee wife and mother. The war of the Roses begins with toxic jealousy, barely survives failed therapy, flirts with divorce, and settles into a Hatfields versus the McCoys feud in which each tries to outdo the other in cruelty. If it sounds grim, it’s not. Despite the dangerous and insidious games on the screen, The Roses is quite funny as long as you remind yourself, “It’s just a movie.” The movie’s success –and its big surprise ending – is due to the skill of Coleman and Cumberbatch. Like the stage-seasoned actors they once were, each has been schooled in nuance, accents, and drama.

 

Some audiences were turned off by the movie’s “meanness.” Sorry, viewers, but that’s on you, not the script or the direction of Jay Roach. The film is a hybrid black comedy and satire and if you don’t get the latter, you won’t get the humor. All those amazing houses and sets weren’t there to make you envious, they were lampoons of materialism and unfiltered ambition. The “war” of the Roses, like most actual wars, could/should have been avoided. Pay attention to Ivy’s desserts, which in their own way, are as architectural as Theo’s designs. You might wish to dive into them, but they are splendid illusions, inedible manifestations of an unchained id. Even sex is treated this way. Kate McKinnon is an out-of-control harpy who puts the moves on Theo no matter who is in the room. She’s over-the-top, but so is everyone else. The Roses isn’t a film, but it’s a very good guilty-pleasure movie.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Sheep Detectives is Cute but Inconsequential

 

 

 

 

THE SHEEP DETECTIVES (2026)

Directed by Kyle Balda

Amazon MGM, 109 minutes, PG

★★★

 

PG movies fall into the category of “review-proof” family films immune from what critics say¹. My take on The Sheep Detectives is that it’s a cute, inconsequential movie with a good soundtrack. It will remind you of Babe, Gordy, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep with voiceovers from famous actors collecting easy paychecks by pretending to be “talking” animals. If you think too much about such movies you’ll conclude they are silly, simplistic, and (of course!) unrealistic, but who’s going to say that when wide-eyed children are engrossed in them and parents are getting a 109-minute break. Besides, you might get a lesson on sheep varieties from watching it.

 

Kindly shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) spends his evenings reading to his sheep, who huddle around and are soothed by his voice. Most of them have no idea what he’s saying, except perhaps Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), an intelligent sheep who is George’s favorite. Each sheep, be it a Merino, a Shetland, a Cheviot, or a Castlemilk Moorit acts according to its breed. Twins Reggie and Ronnie, for instance, are Norfolk Horn sheep who spend a lot of time butting each other in the head. As the life of a sheep goes, this pasture has it made. Even an old Boresay sheep (voiced by Patrick Stewart) believes that sheep don’t die; they just float up and join the clouds. Heaven forbid they would learn about mutton stew.

 

The farm is just outside the village of Denbrook, which is mostly imaginary, but will remind you a bit of Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small, though filming was done in the “Home” counties near London, especially in the Buckinghamshire village of Ivinghoe. It’s a big weekend in Denbrook, its annual agricultural fair. Director Kyle Balda gets a lot of mileage of juxtaposing the excitement and community solidarity of Denbrook with the jaded dismissiveness of urbanites chancing upon the fair. One of the latter is Eliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine), a stuck-up public-school boy² pretending to be a reporter and photographer. In keeping with the rural bumpkin/sophisticated urbanite split, villagers are smiling, cordial, and sometimes on the dopey side. The town policeman Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) is dense enough to make Barney Fife look like a physicist, and Denbrook seems as if it has been peopled by Stepford neighbors.

 

Rural bliss is severely disturbed, though, when George Hardy is found dead. Derry, of course, gets the cause of death all wrong, so the sheep have to figure out how to get stupid humans to see that he was poisoned, just as they must unmask his murderer. What’s a murder mystery without a tin of red herrings? Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole) has long yearned to buy Hardy’s property as he has a secret deal going with a butcher named Ham (!) Gilyard (Conleth Hill) to combine the two flocks and sell more mutton. (There’s a scene between Merrow’s dogs and the two flocks that’s a bovine version of Stalag 17.) Once rural harmony is shattered, other suspects emerge. Solicitor Lydia Hardbottle (Emma Thompson) appears to add more chaos to Denbrook. She is Hardy’s London attorney whose job is to unseal and read George’s will.

 

Much to everyone’s surprise, Hardy is a millionaire who holds the patent on a sheep medicine called “orf.”  Young Eliot steps up to reveal he is actually George’s biological son Peter. Alas, also in town is a visitor from the United States, Molly Gordon (Rebecca Hampstead) who purports to be George’s daughter. All of a sudden, the village is afoul with sheep pellets galore. Is someone pulling the wool over local eyes? Who ya’ gonna call? Sheep detectives!

 

I again emphasize that it’s a cute movie, sometimes quite clever and sometimes a forced feeding of artificial sweetener. Stay through the credits to hear a reworked version of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).” It was such a hit for The Pretenders in the 1980s that many people think it’s an Irish standard. I think everyone can agree it’s a great song.

 

Rob Weir

 

^1. Re: my point family films have different rules, this is Hugh Jackman’s high-grossing movie and he is knocked off early on.

^2. For reasons that go way back in history, in England a “public” school is a private school, often a very posh one.

An Old Robert Parker Book that Asks Question We Should Ask about School Shootings

 

 

 SCHOOL DAYS (2005)

By Robert B. Parker

Putnam, 295 pages

★★★★

 

Here we go again. I did a capsule review of School Days by the late Robert Parker a while ago. It’s a 2005 book about two kids who shot up their school. I decided to re-read it this week based on the news that 16-year-old Colt Gray was given life in prison with no possibility of parole for killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia.

 

I’m not about to excuse such behavior or argue for leniency. Gray did it, admitted it, and seems to bear little remorse for his deed. Maybe the kid’s a punk, maybe he’s a neo-Nazi, maybe he’s mentally ill. I’ve no idea, but Parker’s novel made me think. In the fictional Boston ‘burb of Dowling, Massachusetts, Wendell Grant and Jared Clark took high-powered rifles into their private school and opened fire. They left seven kids dead and numerous others wounded. The did it and, like Gray, were caught and admitted the deed. Case closed, lock the doors, and throw away the key. It was an inexcusable massacre by two monsters. Close the books, heal the community, and try to forget about it.

 

Not so fast. Lily Ellsworth shows up in Spenser’s office and wants him to investigate the incident. She is willing to pay Spenser handsomely to investigate Jared’s involvement in the crime and she can afford however much his fee might be. She is Jared’s grandmother, a pillar of Dowling society, and so upright that she fails to find any humor in any of Spenser’s wisecracks. Spenser’s first instinct is to reject her offer. He tells her that the case against Jared is airtight, but she wants him to make certain and is willing to pay him even if he ultimately concludes Jared is guilty.

 

It would be disappointing if Spenser had pulled a rabbit out of his hat and exonerated Jared. He knows the kid is guilty and is going to jail for a long, long stay. Jared knows it too and tells Spenser to leave him the f*** alone. But Spenser wants to know why it happened. That’s something we seldom ask and maybe that’s why school shootings have become as commonplace as crabgrass and as boring reading a privacy policy update. Fans of Parker’s Spenser series know that Spenser is bonded with psychologist Sarah Silverman, but Parker wisely sends her off to a conference, leaving Spenser to dog sit Pearl and spend a lot of time investigating.  

 

This also made me think. The stock answer, at least from conservatives, is that the shooters were either terrorists, human garbage, or mentally ill. Does anyone stop to ask what happened to a 16-year-old that transformed a child into a teenage devil? How much external harm was done and, more importantly, who was responsible for it? On a tangible level, how does a loner like Jared acquire high-powered guns and learn to shoot them? His parents never had guns, nor did they give Jared several thousand dollars to buy them. That sort of dosh certainly didn’t come from Wendell Grant, even if (as Spenser suspects) he was the mastermind of the attack. Why were Jared and Wendell together in the first place? Wendell was an aggressive football player, came from a non-nurturing family, and was known to be a jerk, whereas Jared was a meek loner. He wasn’t unpopular among other students; he was more like a blank that no one saw. Spenser suspects that something is missing, his affect perhaps. Spenser will call in several favors and dodge dangers to find answers.

 

Spenser’s questions begin to bug President Garner and school psychologist Beth Ann Blair. Pretty good ones, yes? If you’ve never read Parker, this book comes with the warning that Spenser novels are shot through with testosterone, gunplay, the male gaze, and female libido. I will say, though, that School Days reminded me a lot of a quite different scandal. See if you can name it.

 

Rob Weir

 

Lies and Wasted Lives in North Korea

 

 

 

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2010)

By Barbara Demick

Spiegel & Grau, 316 pages.

★★★

 

The above book is now 16 years old, but my one-line review is: If there a country in the world more pathetic than North Korea, I don’t want to know about it. Nothing to Envy was a National Book Award finalist when Barbara Demick published it, but a quick check shows that its current population has barely grown since 1990. That’s due to famine and outward flight of those who have illegally emigrated from their homeland for better lives in Russia or China. That alone tells you something.

 

A pocket recap of mid-20^th century history reveals more. During World War II, Japan occupied the entire Korean Peninsula. The Soviet Union joined the War in Pacific just weeks before atomic bombs ended the war, but their troops occupied the northern part of Korea. In 1945, the U.S. and Soviet Union could not agree upon a unification plan, hence, as in Germany, Korea bifurcated. North Korea drifted toward communism under its ideological premier Kim II Sung, and South Korea into kleptocracy under Syngman Rhee, a Catholic in a Buddhist land who gave economic favors to relatives and friends. The South was, however, a far richer land agriculturally.  In 1950, North Koreans and Chinese communist troops crossed the 38^th parallel of latitude, invaded the South, nearly conquered it, and precipitated the Korean War.  

 

Only General Douglas MacArthur’s risky flanking maneuver at Inchon stopped the advance. MacArthur drove the invaders back north and spoke of using atomic weapons against China. He was dismissed by President Harry Truman, who feared atomic war with the Soviet Union. The war stalemated and, in 1953, an armistice (no peace treaty) restored the status quo. Some three million Koreans died in the conflict. Since then, the DMZ (demilitarized zone) has been one of the most heavily guarded places on earth. Sung essentially locked in North Koreans and anyone caught trying to cross the DMZ was executed. Kim II established a cult of personality and a propaganda campaign teaching that “American bastards” were their enemy, that the North Korean system was pure, and that devotion to it was the highest duty. Citizens were told to spy on each other and report all suspicious behavior. Religion was banned and owning a Bible or demeaning the Kim family were serious crimes.

 

Before Demick did her research in the 21^st century, North Korean propaganda had done its job. Industries provided jobs, per capita income, and its educational, health care, social services rivaled that of the South. Juche (devotion to the system) worked–as long as rice bowls were full.  In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. When Kim II Sung died in 1994, North Koreans mourned as if a savior had died. His son, Kim Jong II took over at the beginning of famine and economic collapse. No one knows how many died of starvation–numbers vary from 420,000 to several million–but Demick, who collected stories from those who fled, tells of people eating corn husks, bark, grass, saw dust, pets, and anything that looked edible. Industries collapsed, illegal black markets emerged, and those who something (including their bodies) to sell, paid smugglers to take them across the Tumen River into Russia or China in hope of getting to South Korea; the successful were called Kotjebi (homeless).  But even soldiers stationed in Pyongyang, the capital where things appeared better, began to question Juche.

 

Demick interviewed refugees of all sorts, including a once-patriotic mother, a woman who left first her boyfriend and then a husband and child behind, a twice-arrested orphan, a teacher who watched students die of hunger, and women who became Chinese wives. Most were from the city of Chongjin. Some who left miss their old neighborhoods, but nearly all felt they were betrayed by their government and were staggered by the wealth of South Korea.

 

Demick’s book is a walk through hell and one of the cruelest set of human rights violations imaginable. Imagine learning that Western aid saved North Korea! Kim Jong II died in 2011, and his youngest son Kim Jong Un took over. Donald Trump has both courted him and called him “Little Rocket Man.” He’s right about the second; North Korea survives because of money that went to weapons instead of food and the Western belief that he’s crazy enough to use them.

 

Rob Weir

Muckle Flugga: The Brink and Back

 

 

MUCKLE FLUGGA (2026)

By Michael Pederson

Faber, 303 pages

★★★★

 

Muckle Flugga is one of the summer’s most-anticipated novels. Written by Michael Pederson, it qualifies as his debut as his well-reviewed Boyfriends is viewed as autobiographical, as it deals with real people and Pederson is a major character.

 

Before going any further, let’s deal with the title. It’s Old Scottish by way of Norn, the ancestor of numerous Scandinavian languages. It’s the name of a real lighthouse island 3km north of Unst and is part of the Shetlands, though some maps skip it as it’s been uninhabited since 1995. This part of the world is better understood by looking at a globe. You’ll notice that Norway is closer to the Shetlands than Scotland’s capital of Edinburgh. Shetlandic culture features a mix of Scandinavian and Scottish. In Scots, “muckle” (or “mickle”) means large or much. Flugga, on the other hand, could mean insect, a craze, a fishing lure, or a bowtie! For reasons beyond my linguistic understanding, put together they mean “big steep-sided island.”

 

The waters surrounding Muckle Flugga are treacherous; they are where the North Atlantic and North Sea collide. In 1854, a lighthouse was built by engineers David and Thomas Stevenson to guide sailing ships and avoid tragic accidents. Thomas was the father of author Robert Louis Stevenson. Until it was automated, a lighthouse keeper and his family lived on Muckle Flugga, a lonely existence, especially in winter when the weather dictated supply boat schedules. Pederson employs a few novelistic embellishments in Muckle Flugga: a mysterious castle-like complex slowly going to ruin and a guest house for the occasional birdwatcher.  For the most part, Muckle Flugga and the nearby Outstack are home to puffins, otters, seals, guillemots, fulmars, and the occasional fox.

 

In the novel, it is the home of a character known simply as “The Father” and his 19-year-old son Ouse (rhymes with booze). The Father is a strict disciplinarian and hopes that Ouse will be a “wickie” (lighthouse keeper) someday, just as his father and grandfather had done. “The Mother,” as she’s known, died years ago and The Father has not recovered from his loss. Ouse is educated (homeschooling and occasional trips off island), but there are gaps in what he learned. Although Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894, but Ouse religiously reads Stevenson and carries on a dialogue with him. A ghost? Vivid imagination? “Figgie” is the only other regular on the island. She is quite pretty and captains the supply ship. She’s attracted to The Father, but he’s too blind to see it.

 

Muckle Flugga is thrown into a stramash (chaos, upheaval) with the arrival of 25-year-old Firth, a putative birdwatcher from Edinburgh, but actually a depressed young man who plans to brood at the end of the world and then kill himself. The Father takes an instant dislike to Firth, who becomes the foil for some of the novel’s funniest sequences. They are essentially Scottish versions of the old jokes about city slickers and (perceived) bumpkins. One incident involves Firth’s first encounter with Cullen skink (a fish bread bowl), and that’s enough for Father to dismiss Firth as a fool.

 

Ouse does not. Firth is a font of information about his travels and a companion to whom Ouse can show off the islands. Ouse indirectly gives Firth a reason to live. Firth detects Ouse’s inner brilliance, his painting skills, and his seldom-spoken desire to see more of the world. Given that Muckle Flugga uses this Stevenson epigraph– “…to be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”–you can see where this is going. But the novel’s mystery lies in what is not said or explained. There is homoerotic frisson between Ouse and Firth, but is this a love affair without sex? A paean to wildness? A middle finger to Father’s stern Calvinism? Manipulative opportunism? Motives are left to the reader, which can be frustrating.

 

Muckle Flugga has gathered some heavy-hitter endorsements. Author Ian Rankin called it a “fever dream,” former First Minister for Scotland Nicola Sturgeon thinks it’s an important book, and filmmaker Alan Cumming praised its “rococo prose.” There’s no doubt that Pedersen can write; though just over 300 pages Muckle Flugga has an epic feel. Pedersen is a heralded poet and brings those skills to bear in gorgeous prose salted with Scottish dialect. As in all dreams, the open question is: whose dream?

 

Rob Weir

Decades Later, Sue Grafton Novels not as Snappy

 

 

 

 

H Is for Homicide (1991)

By Sue Grafton

Bantam Books, 287 pages.

★★

 

Crime writer Sue Grafton passed away a few years back. Grafton’s father was a mystery writer, but she was influenced by Ross Macdonald, considered one of the old-school hard-boiled masters of gritty urban crime novels. She was one of the first “modern” practitioners of that genre, and famous for her alphabet murder series beginning with A Is for Alibi (1982). She made it to Y Is for Yesterday (2017), which was published the year she passed away.

 

I moved on to writers who interested me more, but when presented with a free copy of H Is for Homicide, I decided to see what I thought after nearly two decades. Her protagonist was Kinsey Millhone, variously a private investigator and an insurance fraud agent. The latter is her role in H Is for Homicide. She’s a no-nonsense woman who can pass for a working-class lout or an independent feminist. Bear in mind, though, that her feminism was of the 1980s Second Wave variety. She had no trouble telling off someone who thought they had power over her, but she was keenly aware that women could still get into trouble if they pushed too hard.

 

In H Is for Homicide Kinsey works with but not for California Fidelity (CF), which is in an uproar because its new office is VP Gordon Titus, an efficiency expert with a reputation for gutting offices and making the remaining staff work harder. Kinsey’s track record is solid, but she doesn’t report to CF; she merely rents office space and takes on jobs when she’s low on cash. That’s her current status, but she deliberately antagonizes Titus to let him know she doesn’t have time to be interviewed to see if she “fits” in the new model, which has nothing to do with her. However, when handed an obvious attempt to defraud insurance firms, Kinsey hits the streets of Santa Teresa. (It’s a made-up suburb of Los Angeles, so pick one.) She’s looking for Bibianna Diaz, a Latina, whose claim looks nearly identical to others. Kinsey teases her hair, wears cheap bling, and plays the role of looking for an apartment in Bibianna’s neighborhood–once she finds it. That alone takes detective skills.

 

Kinsey is soon paling about with Bibianna in sleazy, hand-on-women’s-butts clubs with names like The Meat Locker. It’s obvious that Bibianna’s claim is a fraud, but an LA police detective convinces Kinsey to help him break a larger fraud ring in which people like Bibianna are paid pawns. Bibianna, though, is worried about the sort of ring that brides wear. Kinsey-as-Hannah Moore learns quickly that the petite Bibianna is deeply in love in Jimmy Tate. Uh oh; Kinsey went to high school with Jimmy and knows of his brief police career. Luckily both wait for an opportune moment before getting the lowdown. Jimmy does love Bibianna–the two are secretly married–but Raymond, a Hispanic gang leader, wants Bibianna to marry him. A shoot-out outside the club in which one of Raymond’s men is killed ends up with Hannah and Bibianna in a car. They are being rushed off for their “protection,” though they are virtual hostages of Raymond, a large Doberman, and a few gang members. Raymond dotes over Bibianna and can’t understand why she isn’t as affectionate as a future bride should be.

 

Kinsey/Hannah learns how the scam works. A network of drivers around Los Angeles daily crash their “new” cars into others and make it look as if the other person is at fault. They get their insurance information, fill out forms, and use doctors, pharmacists, and physical therapists who are in on the scam. It works because most insurance companies aren’t LA-based. This is an easy nut to crack, if Kinsey can get away. Not as easy as it sounds. She can’t get use of a phone to call back up, and doesn’t know for sure where she is–certainly not a part of LA you’d want to be! Kinsey decides to get on Raymond’s good side by becoming one of his “drivers.”

 

Grafton takes us through the LA underbelly 1980s-style. The book is fast-paced, but Grafton’s “modern” detective novel lacks the bite of more recent fiction. Kinsey is a smart aleck, but she’s no Spenser. Likewise, the bad guys often come off only half as tough as they talk. As a hard-boiled novel, this one from the ‘80s has a lot of runny yolk.

 

Rob Weir