Customer Reviews

Dead Space (Charlie Willis)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I made the mistake of starting this book late at night when I had to get up very early the next day for work. I told myself I'd only read for a half hour or so. Well, that didn't happen. I loved the book right from the beginning and I ended up reading about a hundred pages that night. I was tired at work the next day, but it was well worth it!

I loved this book. The story is very compelling and the characters are fantastic. Also, what I loved most is that DEAD SPACE is hilarious. I laughed out loud many, many times while reading it.

As I got towards the end of the book, I got a little bummed out knowing that my time with the book was close to ending. To me, that's always the ultimate indicator of a great book.

Like I said, I loved this one!

P.S. - I'd like to also suggest two other of Lee's books that I love: MY GUN HAS BULLETS and THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE. If you're looking for great reads, you can't go wrong with them!

Making fun of Hollywood isn't new. There are a lot of TV shows and movies that do it. Heck, Kathy Griffin is making a career out of it. But this is the first time I've seen a book hit the mark. Mr. Goldberg uses his extensive behind-the-scenes knowledge of Hollywood to make fun of movie stars, showbiz, Trekkies, Star Wars fan boys, and all the other movers and shakers. There are two relatively 'sane' people the story revolves around and, well, the rest are pretty much bat poop crazy! I hope you laugh, gasp, and chuckle as much as I did.

This is a very, very funny book, but as one other reviewer said...really 3 books in one. The beginning was complicated with so many characters, in such twisted subplots, I was half-way through the book before I had them straight. That said, this bizarre story is on-target with the sci- fi crowd, those die-hard Trekkies (and die hard they do). Snork (Spock), Pierce (Kirk) are ready to annihilate the evil aliens (the Company) who have are replacing the starship crew with the young and beautiful in the new TV remake. You smile, you laugh and you keep turning the pages. The private investigator part, was forced...how long did this guy have to go until he guessed who may be behind all the murders, explosions, etc??? Yet the action never lets up and you are car-jacked into the third weakest subplot, the killer agents of Hollywood. If you think your boss is bad, wait till you meet these. This was the least funny, just lots of blood. Beware, Goldberg is like Bentley Little, there is no sexual situation or blood bath too extreme to include, so not for the squeamish. Overall, great read, written in the 90's but still better than many over the last decade.

As a veteran of several Star Trek conventions many years back, I cringed with embarrassed recognition while choking with laughter at Dead Space!

I can only wonder why the author tries to pass this off as fiction.

this was great. reminded me of a karp book. not a scifi fan but great story...murder mayhem and lots of laughs. if somebody had proofed for typos would have made for a easier read and another star.

Having read the reviews of Mr Goldberg's books I thought they would be interesting reading material - especially when I found the Monk connection. In a way the characters in Dead Space remind me a little of those by Carl Hiaasen as they appear in a larger-than-life way with what appears to be a preposterous plot. But this is not to the book's detriment as i found the characters and situations very amusing. Having worked with some aging stars in a former life I did find some of the stuff very believable - and then you realise these people are serious about stuff you would not believe.

As a father of a young daughter I found the comments about his own daughter being sheltered from the book to be very apposite. Not for those who object to swearing and sexual imagery but for those that do not find these subjects offensive the book is a hoot. Having once been near a video-game convention his description of the sci-fi fans is really accurate. I find the way the characters are described makes them very accessible.

Despite the different themes running through the book I had no trouble reading it as each element seemed sufficiently separated to make the book easy to follow and yet they were cleverly linked together at the same time. I found the book hard to put down!

I'm now about to read his other books having completed The Walk which was equally enjoyable

I enjoy Lee Golberg's writing. The prequel to this one "My Gun Has Bullets" was hysterical. This one is too. The characters are well drawn and the author's descriptions are so vivid one can imagine it happening as one is reading it. In fact in recalling on Mr. Goldberg's 'Monk' books I remembered it so vividly I was sure it was an episode from the series.
The characters are indeed characters with a capital 'C'. They are zany, wacky, loony, nutty,impossible, implausible, and yet believable. I would say that one has to suspend reality, which is true, but somehow the author leads you along the path so it seems real, plausible even.
There are several ongoing stories. One deals with a remake of a Star Trek type TV show. Mr.Goldberg manages to deftly parody the obsessiveness of Trekkies who will go do anything to ensure that the original characters stay in the remake of the show. Another deals with a studio security guard and former actor Charlie Willis who will do anything to protect the studios stars. Anything. A third is about the first woman head of a studio with a twist. Then there is the ongoing story of a hapless producer Eddie Planet (pronounced like Plan A...reminiscent or Mrs. Bucket on 'Keeping up Appearances') who is insecure and in a continual stew and always scheming. He has a plaque that says "Reserved for Mr. Planet" that he puts on tables from the finest restaurant to Kenny Rogers Chicken restaurant.
And sprinkled through are a myriad of intriguing folks and plots and subplots and twists and turns that will keep you reading and engaged.
Sit back and enjoy this very funny book and be glad you're not a character in it.

Charlie Willis is an ex-cop who works Security for Pinnacle Studios. His role? Troubleshooter. Take care of problems, protect the stars, protect the studio. He has a controversial past and now finds himself slap-bang in the middle of a mystery. Pinnacle has recently formed a new TV network - the Big Network, and someone has a problem with Big's proposed revival of Beyond the Beyond, a 1960's science fiction show with a worldwide cult following. Who exactly has the problem, which is manifesting itself in grissly murders, kidnappings, explosions, and pissing-on-livingroom-walls vandalism is what Charlie has to find out.

This loosely, is the premise of Dead Space, a book by Lee Goldberg, originally published in 1997 as Beyond the Beyond, and now republished for the Kindle. Lee - who incidentally is not related to me - has created a world, more specifically a Los Angeles (more specifically, a Hollywood), populated by manipulative agents with murderous assistants, insane actors, weirdo Beyonders (who attend conventions, write fanzines, and wear false noses a la Mr Snork), and wannabe producers and exec producers. It is a crazy world and to make sense of it we have two "normal" characters - Charlie Willis and Allison Sweeney - who are also the moral compasses of the book.

The story is a true, laugh-out-loud farce. It takes aim at, and collects ... well, pretty much everyone. It's not a laser beam, although it is razor sharp. It's more a semi-automatic spraying bullets everywhere, and everything in its path ends up being a target.

It's not really a murder mystery because you really know who's doing what as it happens. But I still found myself riveted by the story. What's gonna happen next? Who's gonna get it next? How will it get resolved?

Its charm however, lies in the humor. Lee is a modern wit! The characters - each one crazier than the next - are awesome caricatures of people we know, or at least know of. Yes, they're exaggerations. But I defy anyone to read this book, and not have one particular person in mind when they picture Guy Goddard. I won't say who because it'll be self-fulfilling, but you watch, and then tell me I'm wrong!

And what about the unforgettable Eddie Planet (pronounced Plan-A)? Love that name!!

And the most inventive murder scene you've ever read, including one little piece of evidence discovered at the scene which leads to the solving of that crime!!

But what I loved the most, and in the end now has me scouring Amazon for ALL of Lee's other books, is the satirical writing style. I literally laughed out loud - in bed, on the toilet, on a plane, at my desk - as I was reading. I drove my wife nuts with "listen to this line...." over and over. I loved the dialogue and cynical banter, often Charlie to himself. And in the end, I'm jealous. Lee writes how I want to write.

I recommend Dead Space . Go out and get it for your Kindle or your iPhone or iPad. It's worth it!!

Oh, and listen to this line: "Eddie slammed down the receiver and stood up, so preoccupied with the surprising turn of events, he didn't even notice that he wiped himself with William Katt's resume instead of the toilet paper." Priceless!!

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An old science-fiction television series about the adventures of a starship crew traveling through space -- long canceled but still popular with fans -- is revived to form the backbone of a newly created network.

So far, so good. Sounds like "Star Trek" to me. But television producer and writer Lee Goldberg has taken that story, thrown in seriously twisted agents, actors and sci-fi fans, hit the frappe button, and spun out "Beyond the Beyond," an over-the-top melange of ultra-violence, sick humor and black comedy.

Everyone wears a target in "Beyond the Beyond." Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are mutated into the Endeavor's Captain Pierce and Mr. Snork, whose fans emulate the latter character's elephant nose. There's a network boss who creates shows like "Siamese Cops" about a police officer with two heads, and a superagent who uses any tactic to keep his talent under contract.

So when "Beyond the Beyond" is revived for The Big Network, it lets loose a tractor-trailer load of nuts and flakes, especially when the actor who played Captain Pierce, Guy Goddard, attempts to reclaim his role, aided by a group of equally demented fans.

As the body count rises into the stratosphere, it is up to studio security agent Charlie Willis to sort out the problems. Willis is more than up to the job, and comes across as sane (he's only one of two characters with any redeeming qualities) and realistic enough about Hollywood to keep his other job as owner/manager of a storage facility.

So whether you would enjoy "Beyond the Beyond" depends entirely on your taste for humor that knows no boundaries for taste. This is a book that should come with an advisory for mature readers. It's Mel Brooks with a laser blaster. Its humor is so wide-ranging and so scattershot that there's something to offend every reader, especially those who take "Star Trek" and its ilk seriously.

The problem with Beyond the Beyond is that it's three books in one. The story about a Trek-like show, its makers, cast, and fans was the story that originally interested me, but it could have been better done. There's certainly more than enough material to work with, as the recent Trekkies documentary shows.

The second story is an over-the-top satire about Hollywood business practices. And this is way over the top for anything but farcical satire: casual murders, agents who eat human flesh, and so on.

The third is a tough guy private eye novel, one of the hundreds of PI novels over the last few years that try to be original by placing the PI in a somewhat different milieu from that explored by the likes of Chandler and Hammett; in this case, the TV side of showbiz.

Unfortunately, the three books in one never really gel. There are dramatic changes of tone. Absurdly over-the-top satirical passages alternate with more-or-less serious pages about the private eye falling in love. This really should have been three different books.