Review: North of Sunset

A state of mind.

"Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man."
[Robert Louis Stevenson]

Henry Baum can tell you a thing or two about Hollywood. Baum's debut novel was a bleak morality tale that trawled a dark underbelly and lowlife Californian culture, beneath the sheen and lustre of its famous sign, an explosive mix when those two worlds collided. Like The Golden Calf before it, a book that spilled over with violence and anti-celebrity venom, North of Sunset peels away the luxury face-mask of Hollywood and reveals the sallow skin beneath it.

Michael Sennet is a Hollywood star at the top of his game but is bored with the money, the fame and the women. What Sennet hankers is a chance to direct his own vanity project. Cut to the Vanity Plate Killer, a serial killer who is targeting those with personalised number plates. When the paths of one cold-blooded killer and one hot-blooded actor cross, Baum shows us that, when it comes down to it, there's really not much difference between the two: "in movies the serial killer is always seen as a deviant. But in novels murder is often seen as an act of liberation - especially in the Russian novels of the nineteenth century."

"Shakespeare was fine, but it didn't speak to him. He felt guilty about that briefly - wasn't he supposed to worship Shakespeare? But he reconciled it by declaring that he was more interested in expressing the language of his life - the blunt, simple American language. He'd rather play Willy Loman than Hamlet. What did the 16th century have to do with him? He came from cities, cars, modern life. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing."

This is a book not only soaked in the blood of Robert Altman's The Player and Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, but also James Ellroy's Los Angeles trilogy and that slick, hard-boiled graft. And that's one of the clever things about North of Sunset, for while its facade is that of a fast-paced thriller, or even a pulp novel, Baum, though speaking in blunt, simple American language, has crafted a piece of work that has its roots firmly planted in a European literary sensibility, like Crime and Punishment for example, where guilt haunts the killer. Baum even alludes to this through Detective Stein: "Who was the Vanity Plate Killer? Who am I for that matter. Christ, I sound like Columbo, or Raskalnikov. That's right, I'm a homicde cop who knows Dostoevsky."

"God slaughtered sinners and so do I. Curt sratched out the last sentence. Fuck that. I don't want to use God as a scapegoat. Serial killers are always blaming or explaining things on God. Or the devil, something outside themselves. Takes away the guilt I guess. But I want this guilt. I want people to know that I alone am responsible."

Baum raises worthy questions time and time again about what constitutes art - most of his characters see themselves as artists in some shape or form. Producer Marty Goldfarb sees art in his blockbusters: "There was artistry, even integrity, in making money, in enertaining people. Christ, he told that artist residing somewhere deep inside him, I'll give you 100 million dollars and let's see you make something watchable, even meaningful. It's hard to make entertainment, as hard as it is to make some meaningful streak of red across a canvas." Sennet's wife Cheryl Leigh, as successful actress in her own right thinks that "great art was being drowned out by all the popular noise." Our killer, Curt not only thinks that "murder was a work of entertaining art," but also "somewhere deep inside him there had always been a writer, he guessed. He enjoyed the process of writing and he enjoyed telling his story. Most of all he enjoyed imagining the audience reading his book and being entertained by the great profound original depth of his mind." Even Detective Stein, who has his eye on a book deal, thinks that "the job itself was like being a story writer, creating a living fiction about a perp or a vic and trying to make it real."

The multiple perspectives and voices that Baum employs make for an evenly balanced tale, and while he casts a hard-eye over celebrity culture and our obsession with them, it is both refreshing and a huge relief that he can write a social commentary without relying heavily Bret Easton Ellis-like on brand names and pop songs as stilts to prop up his characterisation. What stands out most, is Baum's wicked sense of humour: not only does Tim Griffith, the star in The Golden Calf, make an appearance, but throughout the book all of Hollywood seem obsessed with how great a movie the unfolding current events would make.

"This Vanity Plate Killer thing seems like a good idea for a movie. 'Bonfire of the Vanities' meets 'Silence of the Lambs.'"

"Marty, if you keep talking like that my fist is going to have to meet your face."

"The book Bonfire, not the movie," Marty said, with disgust.

North of Sunset would make a fast-paced, successful movie, but don't be fooled in thinking that Baum's work is a pumped up script, it's most definitely not. The narrative is a taut as a drum and the dialogue effortless, making North of Sunset a page-turner and an example of an effective piece of storytelling that should be envied.

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North of Sunset by Henry Baum
Caliber Press
280 Pages