Old men and their books: Model Actress Whatever

I really need to get back into my one-person book club, it always took me outside of my comfort zone with new novels. And I know I need to get back into it because the last three novels I've read are all by old white guys who I have been following for decades.

Fortunately, they are all fucking excellent writers who put out fucking excellent books that are worthy of further discussion, and that's what we are doing here, before I get back onto the road to literary unknowns.

Model Actress Whatever

By Kim Newman

I didn't read anything about the new Kim Newman book before it came out, because I don't need to. Newman books are always ridiculously entertaining and so much fun. I read them all, and never miss a single one.

But just going by the title and Newman's recent record, I did think this one was going to be some kind of Hollywood horror, a perfectly respectable sub-genre about the terrors of life in Tinsletown, possibly similar to the one that had Chandler and Karloff team up to solve gross mysteries in 1930s Hollyweird.

But Model Actress Whatever turned out to be a direct sequel to Newman's Diogenes Club books, taking those 20th century archetypes and seeing how they do in the reality show saturated media of the 21st. A new generation of cloaked superheroes and legacy villains, doing their best in stressful times.

It can be hard to keep track of all the continuity which probably only all makes sense inside Newman's head, but there is a Shade, and a network that goes back centuries still operating under the fantastical streets.

For a book so clearly set in the here and now, it does give an oddly 90s DC comics vibe, taking legacy characters and making sure the lineage goes on - there must always be a Doctor Shade, there must always be some kind  ofSplendid Six - while being ruthless with older generations (I have to admit a certain sadness about the sad end for Richard Jeperson).

It's frantic and breathless, but just gloriously entertaining, full of groaning in-jokes and references. It's a Kim Newman book about a Kim Newman world. He's not too worried if you can't keep up.