Out There in the Dark
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Out There in the Dark is an old school Hollywood blockbuster. . . . A terrific, grab-you-by-the-throat movieland epic."
---Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
Since leaving Berlin, the proud, distinguished émigré director Dieter Seife has had to content himself cranking out B movies for Superior Pictures in Hollywood during World War II. Finally, Superior's founder, Arthur Lustig, gives Seife the chance to prove himself on a lavish, three-hankie "woman's picture" titled The Big Betrayal.
Set to star is Harley Hayden, the young (and 4-F) actor who's engaged to Lustig's daughter. Though the town's biggest names are in uniform, Seife is convinced he can find a better male lead for his movie. Hayden counters by hiring a disgraced ex-cop named Roarke to look into Seife's private life---does the secretive German have something to hide? What Roarke uncovers is dangerous, disturbing . . . and, maybe, a very different mystery than it seems.
With its atmosphere of lockstep patriotism and rampant paranoia, Wesley Strick's Out There in the Dark provocatively speaks to our own time even as it brings to life the sordid side of 1940's Hollywood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Strick captures the freewheeling but edgy atmosphere of WWII-era Hollywood. Harley Hayden, a handsome but limited actor la Ronald Reagan, is conducting an affair with Eleanor Lustig, whose father, Arthur, is the head of Superior Studios. As Hayden tries to make his way up the Hollywood ladder, Arthur hires a detective, Mike Roarke, to make sure the actor is a suitable suitor for his daughter. As Hayden passes muster, he gets a break when German director Dieter Seife who changes his name to Derek Sykes, more palatable to the American moviegoing public gives him a starring role in his next picture. Hayden's chance comes at a cost, as Derek turns Hayden into his personal whipping boy, and the director's mercurial, neurotic behavior also conceals a secret that Roarke unveils. Strick shows a fine feel for the period and the nuances of Hollywood film life, and his character writing is rock-solid. But problems surface in the tepid plotting: the material dealing with Hayden's career is well crafted but lacks tension, and the Seife/Sykes subplot arrives too late to have much dramatic impact.
