"Death is a Lonely Business" is a fiction novel by Ray Bradbury.

This novel is a period piece set in Venice, CA in the early 1950's. Venice is a town that was built on dreams, with canals and wonderful beach front property, but after the 1940's it quickly started to slide downhill. The canals became stagnant water runs, the population aged and the movie money went out of town pretty quickly. What is left behind are those either at the end of their lives or those who can't afford a better place to live. One of these is a young author who lives in a run down apartment and spends his time trying to sell short stories to magazines. Science fiction magazines to be specific. Of course that doesn't pay much so he has to economize in any way possible, to the point of running back and forth to the gas station across the street to answer the pay-phone in hopes that his vacationing girl friend will call him from Mexico.

That is also the summer when a man is intentionally drowned in lion's cage that was abandoned in one of the canals. This man sees the body and gets the police there to take care of the situation. One of the detectives takes him home and makes sure that if the writer remembers anything about the crime that he should contact the detective. On that rainy night he can think of nothing about the old man's body that he found in the canal. The next day, however, brings the realization that the man was one of the three old men he saw everyday on his way past the trolley car turnaround. And when he goes to ask them who the dead man was, the young writer soon finds himself in a dark tragedy that will engulf the lives of just about everyone he knows with the threat of death.

To those used to Mr. Bradbury's SF and fantastical works, this book will come as a bit of an eye-opener. The author started his career by writing short stories in the horror/noir genre and this book now applies his vast writing talents to this genre again. This piece is in the same territory as "Quicker Than The Eye" (Mr. Bradbury's use of early 1950's Hollywood in the murder mystery genre), but follows the people at the periphery of the glamorous Hollywood studios. "Death is a Lonely Business" follows those who are watching the decay of the glamour, and are trying their best to survive it. Unfortunately someone has taken the idea that the protagonist should be deprived of just about everyone who is involved in his life. And as the writer tries to figure out who is knocking these people off, he endangers yet more people even further out of his direct sphere of interaction.

As with almost all Ray Bradbury stories, the characterization and depiction of characters is excellent. This is a character driven novel (with a few driven characters!) that excels at subterfuge by making the obvious hidden and making the obscure heartbreakingly familiar. The characters involved in this mysterious set of murders are at once well known and distant, being so well drawn in a few paragraphs as to be someone you could or do know and then being forced to withdraw from them as they could be the next one targeted for anonymous murder.

While I am definitely not a reader of the Noir or even a regular reader of murder mysteries, I understand the mechanics of how such a work is put together and Mr. Bradbury is obviously a craftsman in the field. In works like "The October Country", "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "Driving Blind" and "Quicker Than The Eye", he has been able to make the surroundings that are familiar and banal into ones that are dark and threatening. And when he can start in a depressed situation like that in Venice, CA, he can have a field day with theaters and amusement parks set for demolition along with aging movie stars seeking to stay out of the spotlight. The melange of characters and situations is unbelievable and yet thoroughly understandable and convincing. Only in California could such settings and people appear together.

Another keeper by Mr. Bradbury! For those who only know him from "The Martian Chronicles" or "Farenheit 451", this book will be an eye-opener to the varied talents of this wonderful author. And for those who like period pieces or Noir I think that Mr. Bradbury has done a great bit of work giving all too real characters a chance to experience the darker side of the human psyche and still put together a compelling story.

Recommended: Yes