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Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta by Carole Nelson Douglas

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was a hot mess. Now part of it might be my fault as I haven't read this series in forever. I've been on GR 15 years and haven't reviewed one in this series in that time so I've forgotten a lot. That said, to me, it's rather poor form in a mystery series to have more than 75% of your book be working on plot threads from previous books and I'm not talking just romantic entanglements. Let me outline the plots in this.
1. Savannah contacts Temple to help her aunt which happens in the beginning but we don't see this again for almost 100 pages. This is also the main 'new' crime
2. Max, Temple's ex, is back from the dead and she's dealing with that.
3. Matt, Temple's currant fiance is back from Chicago with a hot job offer that might mean a move
4. Molina, the detective Temple conflicts with wants to recruit Max for something
5. Molina wants Temple's help with the Barbie Doll killer as this serial killer (from previous books) may be targeting her daughter
6. Max and Matt have their conflicts
7. Family crap
8. disappearing cats (this Aunt Violet's issue that Temple is hired to help but more importantly she's ill with no will and it looks like she's being drugged in order to get in the will/kill her)

So yeah, hot mess. Most of the book is working on all these previous plots from older books. Aunt Violet's issue is an afterthought. So we have a mystery book with barely a mystery. We have a book that exists to work out Temple's complicated love life with way too much about Max and his issues and Matt and his issues and oh yeah some serial killer. And we get to hear these issues from Temple's pov, Matt's, Max's, Molina's and even the cat's. This wasn't good or interesting. Maybe if i were more up on the series it wouldn't be so bad but even so, it felt pointless.



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The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear by Nat Segaloff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have to say when I was contacted by the publisher as to if I'd like to read this, I almost passed. I'm not terribly interested in movie making. However, I AM a huge fan of The Exorcist so I took it on. I'm glad I did. I will say this for the book it is thorough, almost a little too much so.

It is well put together in a logical sequence all the way to today. Segaloff goes into details of both the director Bill Friedkin and the author, Bill Blatty's childhood, early career and their partnership. From there it launches into Blatty's book and the first movie. Each of the sequels follow in order (Heck I didn't even know there were two TV-only sequels and now I'm wondering how I missed that.) Each book/movie/tv show had a synopsis side-bar.

When I say this goes into a ton of detail I'm not kidding. We see every actor/actress, every one they thought about hiring but didn't, the stunt doubles, all the legal battles over the past 50 years. It goes into all the special effects innovations, who got hurt and when, the Exorcist 'curse' how the shots were taken, how the audio was done etc.

So for me, it was a bit much. I'm not into film making as I said. If you are interested in that, you should love all those details. Even though it wasn't my interest, I didn't find it dull so there's that. We also get a lot into Blatty and Friedkin's philosophies about the movie, how it's not really a horror but how it's proof of the divine (if there's a devil then there's a god fallacy and yes it does explore why that thought process has a fallacy in it) also how it's about the loss and gain of faith and how Blatty thinks of it as a mystery, not horror.

That actually could be one place I could ding this book. It's rather repetitive about the why's of what brought Blatty to write this, like it's in every chapter. It also gives an unpolished look at what went so very wrong with much of the sequels (and what went right). I particularly liked the slap at Fox TV and how poorly they promote most of their stuff (IMO accurate, it's why I stopped watching them, because so many good shows get cancelled after zero promotion)

All and all, this is a highly detailed love letter to The Exorcist and worth the read.



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