G’Day L.A. / Tony McFadden

Reviewed by: Pete Barber

Genre: Suspense/Thriller

Approximate word count: 80,000-85,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: YES  Paper: YES

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Author:

Tony McFadden lives in Australia and has written five novels including G’Day L.A.

For more, visit McFadden’s website.

Description:

Ellie Bourke is a rookie Australian actress trying to break into the Los Angeles TV and movie scene. When her roommate is found dead in the bath, the police treat the incident as a suicide, but Ellie doesn’t agree. The story revolves around her dogged attempts to prove that he was murdered.

Appraisal:

I read much of G’Day L.A. with a grin on my face. The writing style is lean and conversational—easy on the eye. The pace is fast, and the dialogue is crisp, and believable, and often funny.

Ellie’s character pops off the page—she’s someone you’d want to know, you’d want to succeed. The movie-types that populate the story are larger than life and their back-biting and crazy view of the world is fun to watch—the situations and complexities that arise as the different story threads weave together reminded me more than once of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty. Not just because the tale is set in LaLa land, but because the characters actions are far from what you’d anticipate, and yet perfectly logical from within their frame of reference. Ellie isn’t a master sleuth who ‘solves’ the mystery, rather, through sheer determination, she finds herself in situations that create the conflict and chaos required to make the story work. 

A really enjoyable read.

Format/Typo Issues:

A small number of typos.

Rating: **** Four stars