stick to the fictional

Up With the Sun by Thomas Mallon

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Mallon, author of such previous gems as Bandbox and Dewey Defeats Truman, seems to be confusing writing with name-dropping lately.  In his loosely connected Republican Apologist trilogy, the names are members of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 43 administrations.  Here, the names are from show business in the 1950s-1970s.  And while I appreciate that one of the names he drops is that of my own cousin, The Last of the Red Hot Mamas, Sophie Tucker, I know that most people these days have never heard of her, nor of many of the other players who come and go through this book.

The story centers around the life and murder of Dick Kallman, a never-star of stage and screen, who most people have also never heard of, and, harsh as it sounds to say this, probably won't care much about.  Mallon portrays him as a shallow, callow, unethical, and more to the point for the main character of a novel, uninteresting.

The more interesting character is the purely fictional Matt Liannetto, who knew Dick sporadically through his acting career, and who was one of the last people to see him alive.  Through him, we see the both the law and the order aspect of bringing Dick's killers to justice, which is somewhat compelling, in a macabre way.  Matt himself is just a more interesting character, and I wish Mallon had just written a book about him, and made Dick Kallman a footnote to his story.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.