Tue 6 Sep 2016
TREVOR BERNARD – Brightlight. Manor 15278, paperback original, 1977.
Nathan Brightlight is a Hollywood private eye, working out of a corner of mystery fiction I usually turn cartwheels over. The wife of a fading movie star now consigned to a weekly television series has disappeared, and Brightlight is hired to find her, which of course involves considerable digging into the past.
Bernard is definitely not a word stylist of any shape or form. The commentary is terse but unimaginative, and it dies the lonesome death of a lame obligation. A third or fourth generation imitation, and yet it involved me enough to read it in under two hours. Perhaps not completely hopeless?
Rating: C minus.
Bibliographic Note: Nothing is known about the author, Trevor Bernard, whose only entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV this novel is.
September 6th, 2016 at 1:39 pm
I’d like to revisit this one sometime, if I could. That last line of mine suggests that I may have missed something the first time.
September 6th, 2016 at 8:36 pm
Looks like I’m in luck, maybe. I have one for sale on Amazon as a third party seller. The thing is, it’s in Very Fine condition, and I wonder how well it will hold up to a reading at this late date.
Perhaps I should take it as a lesson learned after that Curtis paperback fell apart on me a couple weeks ago. On the other hand, Manor’s might be made of tougher stuff.
September 7th, 2016 at 5:31 am
Wow, I haven’t thought about that one in years. I read it in 1980, but other than the name and the fact that I’d read it, I have no recollection about it at all.
September 7th, 2016 at 11:05 am
Like Jeff I read this a while back but made no notes on it. I always thought I would be able to remember the details of books that I’d read but now, of course, I have difficulty remembering what I read last week. The only thing that sticks in my mind about Brighlight is that I thought it was pretty good. On the other hand it could have been poor and I’m remembering a different book. I still have my copy of Brightlight so perhaps I should give it another read, however, as somebody said, “So many books, So little time.”