Customer Reviews

Rhapsody in Blood: A Benjamin Justice Novel (Benjamin Justice Mysteries)

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

 

 

As a fan of Morgan's "Benjamin Justice" series since the very start, I have had some silent misgivings about the direction in which he has taken the character in the past two novels, from a sexually-active, hard-drinking gay man to a more reclusive, one-eyed HIV+ man on the wagon who seems to dwell more on his past than live for the day. After some thought, I think my reaction is more a byproduct of the fact that I am aging as well, and somehow resented being reminded of it in seeing Benjamin slow down as well.

However, in his newest "Rhapsody in Blood," Morgan takes the character out of his cozy nest in West Hollywood, teaming him with longtime friend, LA Times reported Alexandra Templeton, covering the shooting of a movie at a historic hotel in the remote town of Eternal Springs, now known as Haunted Springs due to two murders that took place there, and which is the focus of the film. They meet the cast, including the 30ish male lead - a frequent subject of tabloid rumors about his sexuality - whose seeming interest in Benjamin has him simultaneously flattered and flustered. When another reporter, known for her merciless "expose'" stories about celebrities, is found murdered with her throat cut (the same as the two victims that are the subject of the film), Benjamin finds himself in the middle of the mystery, with no shortage of colorful suspects around to choose from. Was the murderer the actor, who feared the reporter would try to "out" him, or perhaps it was the rapper with the "gangsta" image who seemed to alienate everyone, or the troublemaker midget stuntman, the hotel owner living with a troubling secret from his past, or perhaps it was the ghostlike female figure Benjamin saw on the rocks outside the hotel window, right before the murder took place?

"Rhapsody in Blood" is a complex, captivating mystery that also teaches lessons about the danger of bigotry and the shallowness of some people in show business. I rate it five stars out of five for lovers of this great series.

In Blind Eye, Benjamin Justice suffered a terrible beating, and ended up violently blinded in one eye. In Moth and Flame, the recovered Benjamin ended up solving the riddle of a complex murder in the city of West Hollywood. Now, in Rhapsody in Blood, Ben is accompanying his best friend, sassy African-American journalist Alexandra Templeton, to a once glamorous hotel just outside of Los Angles, in the town of Eternal Springs, where once again, Ben is plunged into murder, deception and intrigue.

In 1956, on the Ides of March, glamorous film star Rebecca Fox was murdered in the Haunted Springs Hotel. Blame is swift and brutal, Ed Jones, a young African American is immediately judged as the culprit and lynched at the local gaol by an angry mob led by the Ku Klux Clan. The government has since damned the valley for hydroelectric power and the poisoned and lifeless waters of Lake Enid now cover the town where the viscous killing took place.

However, the spirit of Ed Jones continues to haunt the area; new DNA evidence proves that the semen found on Rebecca Fox's panties was not that of Jones, and that he may have been innocent of the crime. The murder investigation is reopened, but things are complicated. An independent film on the events all those years go is currently under production starring some of Hollywood's hottest actors, and there's a new murder for Justice and Templeton to solve when Toni Pebbles, an aggressive and belligerent gossip columnist shows up, intent on outing one of the movie's stars.

Of course, Ben continues to be haunted by a scandal, which long ago cost him the Pulitzer Prize and his job as a journalist. Now 50, HIV positive, and existing mostly hand to mouth, Ben is still relies on Templeton and his older friends Maurice and Fred to keep him focused, but in this tale, Ben is mostly able to keep himself out of trouble. Still prone to foolish vanity, wishful thinking and the loneliness of a man pushing fifty who hasn't hooked up with anyone for a while, Ben can't help but be attracted to sexy A-list movie star Christopher Oakley.

Author John Morgan Wilson keeps the action moving with a hectic plot and lots of wonderfully enigmatic characters. There's no doubt that Ben is an assiduously charming hero, his instincts are always finely tuned, and he still has the ineffable knack for getting to the heart of the story. But can he uncover the truth behind Rebecca Fox's murder and bring the real perpetrator to justice? There are so many possibilities, false leads, missing evidence, modus operandi, opportunity, motivation and all manner of deception.

Perhaps the answers to the riddle lie in the past, lost in a place that means something so different to so many of the characters and where nefarious motives and furtive shenanigans have been shrouded in secrecy for so many years. The themes are vital and relevant - the misogyny of rap music, life in the closet, the injustices of racism, and the fickleness of Hollywood. As Ben draws closer to the heart of the mystery surrounding Haunted Springs and the truth of what really happened in room 418, he must continue to live with his past in the way one lives with the nagging pain of an old injury that never fully heals. Mike Leonard March 06.

John Morgan Wilson's books have always been filled with beautifully drawn characters, especially his lead storyteller, Benjamin Justice. The stories are richly layered, and each one has become darker than the last. Rhapsody in Blood is as compelling as every other book in the way it gently but surely draws you into the mystery, but it's a definite departure from the world in which the other stories take place. Justice is lured away from Los Angeles for what is supposed to be a mountain resort getaway and gets pulled very quickly into a mystery that spans generations and leads to killing in a remote hotel occupied by a handful of people with many potential motives for murder. It's amazingingly engaging . . . a true page turner. It's also a pleasant sojourn from the rest of the Justice series -- by taking the action away from West Hollywood and the broader Los Angeles area it becomes a different kind of story, with less emphasis on Justice's downward psychological spiral and more on the characters around him. It might have been inspired, in part, by Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, given the sequestered setting and the layers of corruption that conceal what really happened in the 1950s murder that sets the current story on its course. And it should be a must-read for anyone who's drawn to character-driven mysteries that become more complex with every page. It's a unique -- and standout -- entry to this amazing series.

Justice accompanies his friend Alexandra Templeton to the remote Haunted Springs Hotel, where they uncover evidence relating to a race-related murder that happened many years before. Justice is still on Prozac, and he's a mellower hero, though still putting himself in danger periodically. My favorites are still the earlier books.

Neil Plakcy, author of Mahu Surfer: A Hawaiian Mystery (An Alyson Mystery)

While it is still worth a read (although you may want to wait for the paperback),this is my least favorite installment of the Benjamin Justice series. I was disappointed because the book was nowhere near the excellence I had come to expect from John Morgan Wilson. In my opinion, the story was formulaic and trite, compared to Wilson's other books. Other descriptions that come to mind are pale, tame, and completely lacking in punch, compared to his other work. Most authors suffer in comparison to John Morgan Wilson, and in Rhapsody in Blood, unfortunately, so does he.

Benjamin Justice returns after having just finished his memoirs. He is fast approaching fifty, has a paunch but still has his elderly landlords Maurice and Fred, although they have very little to do with the plot of Wilson's latest. Justice and his good friend Alexander Templeton go to a resort hotel in a place called Haunted Springs; she to work on a story, he just along for the ride. Of course he takes with him Walter Mosley's CINNAMON KISS for reading. (Mr. Wilson always plays tribute to this other fine mystery writer by referring to him in each of his own mysteries.) What evolves of course is a tale that spans 50 years involving murder, suicide and lynching. There is a motley group of characters: a vicious reporter intent on "outing" someone in order to revive her sagging career; a gorgeous Adonis whom Justice develops an immediate crush on; a lippy midget stuntman; an out-of-control child actress who has made her fortune making "slasher" movies, a rapper who travels with a bodyguard; a hotel owner who insists on playing Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" over and over, a piece that is much overplayed in these United States-- you actually can hear the piece and wish desperately half way through the novel that he would play something else-- a Latino detective on crutches, and several characters long since dead but who come to life as Justice gets involved in all that has happened at this strange hotel, plus a half dozen or so others.

Mr. Wilson works out the plot with intricate details and rather slowly, almost too slowly at times. There is not a murder until 100 pages into the story. We are pretty sure who is going to get taken out; and from the evidence that Justice sees, as he is the first person to view the crime scene, the list of suspects is narrowed down to two. At times the novel takes on the feel of DON'T LOOK NOW except Justice keeps seeing someone in a yellow dress rather than a child in red.

As always, Mr. Wilson is interested in serious subjects; this time they are racism, the injustice of the criminal justice system, the touchy subjects of outing and men who have sex with other men but see themselves as straight. At times his prose becomes almost poetic when he writes on the things he cares about: outing, lynching in America, rap music, facing the truth about our history. "Do we truly heal-- as individuals, families, communities, nations-- if we choose to remember selectively, to recall only that which is acceptable and comforting, to recreate lives in place of the truth?"

RHAPSODY IN BLOOD may not be Mr. Wilson's best book but is certainly well worth reading.

Once Benjamin Justice was revered as a fine journalist who deservedly won a Pulitzer for his articles on nursing his lover while his beloved was dying from AIDS. When it was substantiated that Ben fabricated his story, he became despised and black balled. Sixteen years later, the only person to return a Pulitzer solves mysteries instead of writing articles.

In 1956 in Haunted Springs on the Ides of March, Eternal Springs Hotel handyman Ed Jones allegedly killed film star, Rebecca Fox; Jones was immediately lynched. Twenty-five years later on the same day in the same room, Rebecca's daughter Brandy committed suicide. Author Richard Pearlman writes a book on Rebecca's death, but his DNA testing of semen found on the victim proves not to be from Jones. A movie A Murder in Eternal Springs is about the be made at the site of the tragedies so LA Times reporter Alexandra Templeton convinces her friend Ben to accompany her as she covers the event. Also there is despised viper tabloid reporter Toni Pebbles, who plans to expose the secrets of someone involved in the project, but is killed before she can do so. With Templeton encouraging him, Ben investigates four murders five decades apart.

People will sympathize with Benjamin Justice, who is HIV positive and not a bad person though he made a terrible mistake sixteen years ago under extenuating circumstances. He has accepted his fall from grace gracefully and since has tried to do the right thing even solving numerous homicides along the way. His latest caper is a complex tale that has its roots in the past as Benjamin seeks what happened in 1956, 1981, and now. RHAPSODY IN BLOOD is John Morgan Wilson meting out justice for the dead as only he can.

Harriet Klausner

The Benjamin Justice mystery series has long been one of my favorites. Author John Morgan Wilson has focused his novels on hard-luck and battered ex-journalist, Benjamin Justice, and his difficult crawl toward some kind of personal and professional redemption. It has been a tough gauntlet to run, but Justice's trials and tribulations have been highly original and mostly engaging.

"Rhapsody in Blood" is an entirely different kind of book. Much less about protagonist Justice and more of a "manor house" mystery, albeit one set in a remote corner of Southern California with a tinsel town flavor. Benjamin Justice is along for the ride (literally), and functions as kind of a bystander and guest sleuth. Somehow, the story just doesn't meet the standard set by previous (and subsequent Justice books). Maybe it because it has a kind of a formula plot with predictable outcome. Or maybe it's because author Wilson has populated the tale with a large cast that requires an unusual amount of dialogue. Creation and management of dialogue is often the toughest part of writing, and in "Rhapsody...", there is too much cliche and posing to my taste.

Ultimately, the biggest problem is probably that there's just not enough about Justice himself in this one. The protagonist is used a whole lot more here as a mouthpiece to explain or complain about racial intolerance, suicide hotlines, outing of gay celebrities, rap music and other issues that the author is preoccupied with. In the context of this book, it all sounds a bit contrived, musty and unconvincing.

For fans of the Justice series, the book is probably worth a read. The good news is that at least one subsequent title returns to great form.

Mr. Wilson, yet again, spins a very interesting tale with interesting characters. This one seems a bit like an old hollywood mystery movie. Lonely hotel, stranded guests, rainy night, and the old "one of you in this room is a murderer" type atomosphere. I loved it.

I like that BJ seems a bit more mature and I'm so glad he's off Prozac. I have nothing against Prozac, but his last adventure it seemed to focus of his life and it irritated me. :)

I refrain from summarizing the plot of the novel as this has been done in previous reviews. More important is what author John Morgan Wilson has done to Benjamin Justice.

Though Justice is no longer on Prozac, he still seems a bit washed out temperamentally. He has learned to walk away from a confrontation; he remains successfully on the wagon; he takes his HIV meds on schedule. In the early novels, it was clear (without resorting to vulgarity) that Justice was a sexually-active gay man. In "Rhapsody" author Morgan Wilson has even reigned in Justice's sex life; our hero is reduced to longings from afar for the sexually alluring, yet scheming, actor Christopher Oakley.

As far as the complexity of the mystery itself, I had guessed the identity of the killer and motive for the murder about halfway through the novel. There was nothing left to do but read on until my suspicions were confirmed.

As always, though, John Morgan Wilson remains topical in his choices of subject matter. He touches upon outings among gay Hollywood; child stars and stage mothers; rabid gossip columnists; "gangsta" rap; the pervasive racial and sexual intolerance that continues to blight life in the United States.

Despite all these ingredients that Morgan Wilson has tossed into his literary stew, the end result has no flavor, is thin and unsatisfying

In short, Justice has become boring.