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Review: Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen by Sarah James


Blurb from Goodreads:
Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made.

But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes any one of the Canteen's luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime. To catch the killer, Annie falls in with Fiona's friends, a bitter and cynical group―each as uniquely unhappy in their life and career as Annie is in hers―that call themselves the Ambassador's Club.

Solving a murder in real life, it turns out, is a lot harder than writing one for the stage. And by involving herself in the secrets and lies of the Ambassador's Club, Annie just might have put a target on her own back.
 
This was a bit of a meandering trainwreck from the first page but I could see it being a very clever movie with a star studded ensemble cast. I love the time period and would love to read more about the Hollywood Canteen but this book just felt so disjointed. There was a lot of whining and a lot of red herrings to get to nowhere fast. Hope you have better luck!

Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen comes out next week on November 7, 2023 and you can purchase HERE.  

The article was full of one ridiculous detail after another, the least of which was that the Hollywood Canteen had been completely scrubbed from the situation. The way Variety reported it, Fiona may as well have died in the back room of some seedy nightclub, surrounded by gangsters and criminals. God forbid Hollywood's bastion of patriotism be tainted with the truth. There was also the suicide note, allegedly found in Fiona's pocket: Please forgive me. I can't go on like this. The pain is too much. Fiona Farris would never have written anything so hackneyed, so vague and unspecific.

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