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					the case of the hollywood homicide: a janice and mel pulp novel by palomine http://www.xenafan.com/fiction/content5/palomine_hollywood1.html SYNOPSIS: With her tongue firmly in her cheek, this writer puts our Janice and Mel in the middle of something that comes out like a cross between The Maltese Falcon, The Xena Scrolls, and a Mel Brooks movie! NANCY: I know it sounds a little strange... EWOK: *howling with laughter at the prologue* NANCY: Hey, Ewok, don’t break anything there! EWOK: Okay, hang on. Mesopotamia? Rewriting the backstory, or not doing their fact checking? NANCY: Basically just a flub I assume. Pity, because the rest of this is brilliant. EWOK: This is a delicious characterisation of Janice Covington. I'm loving every moment of it... excerpt: You ain't lived until you've heard "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" coming out of Clark Gable's mouth in squeaky Arabic. Then again, Mel says that's my philosophy of life anyway. Knows me like a book, she does. EWOK: It professes to be a pulp novel, and with lines like this, it's right on track: excerpt: But Bogie was hanging on her every word like he'd just fallen off the Titanic and she was a life preserver. NANCY: And here’s another classic moment. Who needs to review? This story speaks for itself! excerpt: She bent over and stuck the bobby pin in the lock and fiddled with it for all of three seconds. That's about how long it was before the door swung open and she stepped back to let us in. "It's a trick my godfather taught me when I was a little girl," she confided. She was a woman of many skills but you had to wonder about Mel's family life sometimes. EWOK: I can't review this. It's all i can do to read it without breaking a rib. excerpt: When the doorbell rang she went to answer it and came back with the biggest box I've ever seen that didn't have a body in it. NANCY: *applause* This writer is a FIND! The only down point I’ve really found is the sentence structure. Long sentence alert! She's got so much to say, and just not enough sentences to do it in! EWOK: To boldly go! Whoops, wrong oeuvre. NANCY: Heh, well, despite any of that, this is an absolute classic. The voice is what I love most. First person stories don't usually do it for me, but this gumshoe, hammy Janice is just pure indulgent fun. I can almost *hear* Renee uttering the lines. EWOK: Glad you found this one, Nancy? NANCY: Absolutely! NANCY: This is an ongoing piece, so it’s hard to give a fair rating. Let’s just say we’ll keep reading with interest. My rating for the first two parts is definitely a 9! Beware, do not read if you've just had stitches put in... EWOK: 8 1/2. Points deducted for injuries sustained. Laughing.