Earthquake Weather

By Terrill Lee Lankford

Book Overview

In this darkly humorous, hardboiled Los Angeles Times bestseller by a former Hollywood screenwriter, Mark Hayes goes from aspiring movie producer to murder suspect after a major earthquake rocks L.A. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345467779
• ISBN13: 9780345467775
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

An Inside's View

The author writes from an insider's view of Hollywood. We've all heard the stories about the"sharks" of movie land. They are all here: the evil producer that's walked over everybody on his way to the top. He throws a party, inviting all his enemies to gloat, and is found murdered the next day. The writing in this one is smooth and flowing. Once I started, I was hooked until I finished. Enjoyed it so well, I immediately ordered the sequel, Blonde Lightning. If you like a good mystery written with a deft touch, one can't go wrong with this one.

Excellent as always

T.L.L. has got to be one of my favorite writers. I've read his other two books and enjoyed them both immensely. This one didn't disappoint either. His books are never the "feel good novel of the year", but I still find myself laughing despite others' misfortune. There is good characterization and prose. The content is both interesting and makes for a good storyline. The story is written such that you know the main character is flawed, yet you feel empathy for him anyway. In a round-about way, Earthquake Weather takes the few ingredients of Grisham novels that I like and makes it work throughout the whole story. If possible, I would have given this book 4.5 stars, but since it was a choice between 4 and 5, I'll give it 5. The only problem I had was with the ending. It seemed a little abrupt. ** Somewhat of a Spoiler ** The revalation of the murderer was kind of out of the blue. The main character suddenly has a revelation and figures it out saying "it was obvious". 7/8 of the book goes to examining the main characters ordeals and experiences, then suddenly with 10 pages left, he thinks to himself and says "suddenly I had an epiphany". There was really nothing that contributed to that throughout the story. I won't give too much that could spoil things, but suffice to say, I found it abrupt, and mildly unsatisfying. However, I understand T.L.L. is working on a sequel and I am eagerly awaiting my chance to get that satisfaction of a proper ending.

Outstanding Hollywood satire

Set in the tension-filled days following the deadly L.A. temblor of 1994, Terrill Lee Lankford's Earthquake Weather is a biting satire of Hollywood cast in the form of a murder mystery. As a longtime filmmaker, Lankford knows the business from the inside out, and he uses that knowledge to flay Tinseltown's overinflated egos and pretensions with razor-sharp wit. His main character, Mark Hayes, is a development executive stuck in a dead-end job working for a tyrannical movie producer. When the producer is found dead floating his pool, the list of suspects seems to include just about everyone in Hollywood, including Hayes. Hayes sets out to find the killer himself, along the way encountering a rogue's gallery of showbiz malcontents that will have readers shaking their heads in disbelief, all the while laughing out loud. Earthquake Weather is the best Hollywood novel since Michael Tolkin's The Player -- and a fine crime story besides. Reviewed by David Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times

weather report

Terrill Lankford fulfills and exceeds all genre expectations in his compelling noir, EARTHQUAKE WEATHER ... it is believable in its details about the world and workings of Hollywood, darkly funny in its take on that world, complex and wise in its handling of its varied cast of characters. It has a cynical surface, as any Hollywood novel should have, but under that surface lies a core of compassion as deep as the San Andreas fault. The movie references are organic and relevant to the mystery, and are fun as well. Mark Hayes is a complex narrator, a post-millennium hero, who leads the reader through the maze of this murder mystery with wit and style, and in the creation of Charity James, Lankford pulls off an authentically erotic female character who is not a cliche. EARTHQUAKE WEATHER is the true heir to SUNSET BOULEVARD, and a worthy one.

Dark and funny

One line typifies the author's cynical vision of Hollywood: after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the narrator notes that the destruction has caused people to re-evaluate their lives and buy new glassware.I read that, stopped, read it again. And laughed. Lankford's humor sneaks up on you like that in a finely wrought story of frustrated ambition that seems quintessentially American.The PW et al. reviews tell enough of the story, but they don't truly communicate how authentic this feels, how deeply revelatory it is of the machinations film people not only take for granted, but assume are life itself.BTW, there is absolutely nothing about this book that makes it remotely like Jackie Collins as another reviewer believes, because Lankford knows how to write.