Customer Reviews

Oscar Season: A Novel

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

 

 

Mary McNamara, a reporter for the LA Times, knows Hollywood well, and it shows. In this novel she gives us an insider look into the frenzied preparations during the weeks ahead of the Academy Awards -- not in the Kodak Theater, or a film studio, but in the Pinnacle, a luxury hotel that becomes home away from home for movie stars and producers during Oscar Season.

I never imagined that what goes on in the service industry could be so interesting, but McNamara manages to create a world that seems a lot more entertaining than many Oscar ceremonies. I thoroughly enjoyed about 250 pages of the book -- and then we got to Oscar night and the whole thing went flat.

The problem is that, for an alleged whodunit, Oscar Season is not much of a mystery. The bad guys are so poorly drawn, it's hard to understand their actions, or to care much about what they did, one way or another. Solving the crime is the heart and climax of any mystery, but here it comes as a total let down. I almost felt sorry McNamara had wasted those pages on the who-did-what discussion, when she clearly had so many other interesting things to show us. McNamara has talent, and I have no doubt she could write many compelling novels set in Hollywood. I just don't think mysteries are her thing.

Oscar Season by Mary McNamara is a fast-pace mystery novel set during Hollywood's most tumultuous time of the year: the time period between the Academy Award nominations announcement and Oscar night. At first, Oscar season at the hotel seems to be business as usual for PR Director of the Pinnacle Hotel, Juliette Greyson. Well, as usual as can be for one of Hollywood's hottest hotels hosting all of the big name celebrities who come to stay for Oscar week. That is until a series of mysterious deaths start to seem all too connected to be coincidence. Is someone trying to sabotage the Oscars? And if so, why?

Mary McNamara spent time with the people who run the Four Seasons in Los Angeles to get a real insiders view of the preparations that go into making a high end hotel run smoothly during Oscar season. Her attention to detail makes this novel compulsively readable and intriguing.

Where this book fails is as a mystery novel. The mystery that propels the story line in Oscar Season falls flat in the end. The ending was anticlimactic and dull. McNamara never manages to truly spin a suspenseful thriller.

Pick up this book for a fun behind the scenes glimpse of the inner workings of a Hollywood hotel during this glittering time of year in LA but not to indulge in a real mystery story.

I was surprised at how quickly I was caught up in this book. Usually it takes many pages before I get really involved in a book's characters and plot, but that happened right away with Oscar Season. The plot moves along quickly and I had a lot of fun trying to figure out who did what and why - all the way up to the end. The book provides a detailed view of the inner workings of a major Hollywood hotel, which I found just as fascinating as the murder mystery plot. Lots of famous names are sprinkled throughout, which really added to the sense of not being sure where truth turns into fiction. It was a great read for a cold winter weekend (I don't live in Hollywood, where, as the heroine point out, violets bloom all year long!).

If you are a fan of Hollywood behind-the-scenes thrillers, do yourself a favor and read OSCAR SEASON by Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic. She perfectly captures the reality of the annual Oscar frenzy in Hollywood.
[...]

Mary McNamara has brilliantly crafted a spellbinding tale of intrigue and murder set during the glitzy spectacle known as Oscar Season. The hub of the frenzied preparations is the luxurious Pinnacle Hotel. PR director, Juliette Grayson, along with a cast of delightful, tabloid-based characters, suspect that someone may be sabotaging the Oscar planning. Ms McNamara, a L.A. Times reporter, vividly creates her story as only someone with an insider's view, can. This engaging novel is delightfully captivating from page 1. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this very, very entertaining murder mystery!!

This is an interesting book.

It is sometimes even a well-written book. Consider this passage:

"Bill Becker had accomplished one thing. He had managed to outshine the actual nominations in the media--'and when you can push a transvestite nominated for Best Actor off the front page, you've entered a whole new level of media whoredom,' said Gregory. The murder stunt was the only thing anyone was talking about, from Larry King to the girls pushing latte at Starbucks. People were shocked, horrified, amused, outraged, gratified. People thought the Oscars were a joke, sacrosanct, overblown, meaningless, the epitome of Hollywood insanity/glamour. The L.A. Times quickly put together a five-part series on the economics of awards season with a history of network coverage and mind-profiles of all involved in the stunt, while the New York Times just had an L.A.-bashing field day. 'But Can They Fake an Earthquake!' ran the headline of one editorial." [Page 64-65, hardback edition]

That paragraph strikes me as an above-average example of word-smithing. I'd question only the word "just." I'm particularly impressed by that hopelessly incorrect but nevertheless inevitable exclamation point.

However interesting, though, however well-written, "Oscar Season" is not, alas. a very good book. Just look at the earlier Amazon reviews. It is clear that while the book generates a lot of goodwill, something about it is seriously out of whack. The book is out of whack because it does not know what it wants to be.

"Oscar Season" might have followed any one of four paths to success. It might have been a collection of anecdotes about some of the offstage shenanigans that take place during La-La Land's Oscar Season, the period from the announcement of the Academy Award Nominees to the presentation of the Oscars themselves. Mary McNamara, the author of the book, we are told has covered Hollywood for the L.A. Times for seventeen years. She is therefore particularly well-placed to roll out anecdotes, shop talk and war stories. Since Ms. McNamara uses real names only for the background characters, part of the fun of a purely anecdotal book might have been to figure out who her lead characters might represent.

"Oscar Season" might have been one of those big, sprawling things such as "Airport" or "Hotel" that Alex Hailey regularly used to send blazing into stratospheric best-sellerdom, They were lengthy studies of a particular business or activity, always sugar-coated with crunchy but largely irrelevant, forgettable plots.

"Oscar Season" might have been a true genre novel, in this case, a chick-lit, employment-based mystery. If so, Juliette, the heroine, might have been a spunky, just divorced woman, somewhat reluctantly entering middle age, who stumbles upon an inconveniently placed corpse, only to solve the dastardly crime a couple of hundred pages later.

Or "Oscar Season" might have been a self-conscious literary novel, the travails of a fading woman, more than half-way into utter anomie, blown like a feather between the countervailing winds of nearly random events, seeking love and self-respect from the very men whom she knows will never provide it.

First-time novelist McNamara might, as I said, have chosen any one of these four paths. Unfortunately, she chose to jog along all four at once. The sad result is obvious. The anecdotes are neither numerous enough nor amusing enough to stand on their own. The behind-the-scenes workings of a major showbiz-oriented hotel could certainly have stood up to the Hailey treatment, but McNamara, having climbed the peak and looked down upon the plain, chose to trot off in a different direction. Juliette simply isn't spunky enough to carry the weight of a genre mystery. She doesn't make things happen; they simply happen to her. She is effectively a doormat for every male she regards as having more power than she has--and she seems to know an awful lot of such men. On the other hand, she has too much spunk for a literary novel. She actually holds down a job! With some success!! And she cracks the whip over men and women whom she regards as being lower down in the hierarchy than she is. She even makes one or two decisions in the course of the book--a most unseemly thing to do in literary fiction.

There you have it: "Oscar Season" is an interesting, sometimes well-written, utterly wrong-headed first novel. For actual achievement, I'd give it two stars. As a demonstration of potential, though, I have to kick that up to three stars.

This book is a failure, but a noble failure. I look forward to Ms. McNamara's second attempt with high hopes.

As always when the countdown to the Academy Awards gala begins, much of Los Angeles is caught up with the glitz, but many prepare for the event. For instance the ritzy Pinnacle Hotel Director of Public Relations Juliette Greyson knows how important the Oscar month is to her hotel and works accordingly expecting zaniness as the norm as she hosts the Oscar Season Summit and explains the Oscar Might Survivor Kit excludes cyanide to the employees.

However, this season is different as the "Oscar Curse" seems to be haunting the participants. British actor David Fulbright is shot dead in the hotel's pool. A reporter covering the event, a starlet nominated for best actress, and a screenwriter also nominated were murdered. For Juliette the curse would be curious but no more than that except for Fulbright's death that seems connected to her outside the hotel; however the third victim is more linked to Juliette as he is her former husband Josh Singer. She and superstar Michael O'Connor investigate the "Oscar curse" although she worries how their amateur sleuthing will harm her beloved battling cancer.

Jackie Collins's fans will enjoy this up front and personal look at the Oscar persona filled with egomaniacs who would do anything to get the edge including killing the competition. The investigation is fun but more so because it enables the audience to see deep into the lives of Hollywood much further than the Rivers' duet ever escorted fans. Not for murder mystery purists, OSCAR SEASON is a fun astute glimpse into Oscar Nation.

Harriet Klausner

great mystery, love story, and a peek at the "inside of all things hollywood," enjoyed a lot,