Book Review: Frames

Frames by Loren D. Estleman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Loren Estleman is that rare novelist who is worth reading in as many different genres as he chooses to write (at least three by my count), and this breezy little novel about where modern Hollywood meets its own past was a fun read-- think screwball comedy for the digital age.

I especially appreciate that so many of the characters in the book are drawn sympathetically. "Fanta" and "Kyle" and "Harriet" and "Sergeant Clifford" and "Kalishnikov" and Valentino himself are people whom I'd actually like if they were real. Even "Anklemire," the former Marketing Weasel now slumming in UCLA's Information Services department, brims with sleazy good humor.

So why three stars rather than four or five? In two words, "shop talk." What got to me after awhile was Estleman's near-manic insistence on packing the story with film trivia. I get that the lead character and his friendly supervisor are both film geeks, but I also get the impression that Estleman was trying too hard.

This is nominally a murder mystery, but you can't read three consecutive paragraphs in the book without encountering a cinematic reference of some kind. Sometimes the allusions are unobtrusive, but more often than not, they read like what you'd get if everybody in a room were trying to outsmart each other. These characters have a patter. If I may traffic in movie references for the sake of a point myself, "Frames" is like a mashup between "The Pink Panther" and "The Philadelphia Story" -- each a good film in its own right, but bound to lead to confuzzlement when combined, which is why I "refudiate" Estleman's intent while admiring his craftsmanship.

Although Valentino has title billing, the characters that kept me reading were the beautiful law student with the preposterous name ("Fanta") and the emerald-eyed LAPD sergeant whose best scene is an interrogation. Without those two women, the story would drop from "likable" to merely okay. Still, you could do worse in picking a summer read.