Re-read In Honour:

Ray Bradbury, author of science fiction classics Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, dies in Los Angeles, his daughter confirms. 6/6/12

Home. Narrated by Robert O'Keefe. Unabridged.

Craftsmanship indeed.




Scott Joplin 1907

Finished up Death Is a Lonely Business--Ray Bradbury's 1985 non-SF novel. Set in 1949, this novel evokes the atmosphere of the time as well as giving a tribute to hard-boiled detective novels. But, I tell you, if Hammett and Chandler had written like Bradbury I would be a hard-boiled fan instead of hooked on British Golden Age. Well, maybe. He uses their style, but twists it to display his own particular Bradburian flair. His descriptions echo the hard-boiled era but the exaggerations sound so m More...

While not Bradbury's all time best, this is a nice change of pace. Written relatively recently-- 1999-- the book is a postmodern mystery with a young version of the writer himself cast in the role of the detective. The killer is particularly creepy, an unseen presence waiting outside the homes of the failures and the alone, and waiting for a chance to end their lives without ever doing more than gently touching them. Old women scared to death, drunks turned over in bathtubs, blind men tripped on More...

I've read this book twice. It is written in a noire style, but with a feel of the fantastical running through it. The main character is a struggling writer (Bradbury himself) who is trying keep his art flowing but is lonely. His girlfriend is an ocean away and he seems so detached from everyone around him. But then a murder mystery unfolds and the writer must solve it. As the novel moves forward you find that Bradbury has many friends, some existing, some new, the relationships brought about thr More...

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Sometimes Bradbury's writing is lyrical; sometimes it's just precious. (And sometimes it's just the wrong word, Ray, unless you're writing nonsense poetry.) Once I got into the flow of it, however, I was less bothered by his style and enjoyed the story a great deal.

The unnamed narrator is a young writer living in Venice, California, in the late 1940s, at the point when the old Venice Pier's amusements were being closed in preparation for the pier's demolition. (I'm not sure how much of the sett More...

A struggling writer of science fiction stories is living in Venice, California, missing his girlfriend, and tracking down a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances due to foul play. This is partly a novel of struggling, more a murder mystery, and even more a dream-like exploration of the purpose of life.

The mood and ambiance is enchanting, the characters are compelling, complex, and mysterious. The prose draws you into to the kind of spell that only Ray Bradbury can weave. As one might gu More...

I am a reader who doesn't need a lot of action in a book. I consider myself character driven in my reading yet I enjoyed Bradbury's "Death is a Lonely Business". It was slow to get into, yet by the end I really wanted to know what happens. He created quite good caracters even though their voices were not distinct, it was all the narrator's voice speaking and he was a real name dropper.It was a bit showoffish but the storyline let us excuse the narrator as he was young and a little childish and s More...

I found it a little unsettling that at the moment of Ray Bradbury's death, this particular book was sitting by my bedside. Of all of his books to have on hand, why this one? I found it even more disconcerting to realize that this mystery novel is partially autobiographical. The unnamed narrator is a 20-something writer living in Venice Beach, California during the late 1940's. How strange a coincidence is that?

As for the book itself, the plot is straightforward: The starving-artist writer uncove More...

I love Ray Bradbury. I love his books, I love his short stories, I love how his cover picture has been the same one (the one of him holding his cat) for as long as I can remember, and I love that people always ask if he's still alive or not. The man is a mystery to me, and some of his books and stories touch me in ways that other books and stories have not. (No, that's not meant to be dirty. For once.)

Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes are the two Most-Important-Bradbury-Books-to More...

Ray Bradbury is a skilled author. One of his best talents is stringing an engaging story, which twists just when you think you're about to be satisfied with a great conclusion into an even better one! This story lives up to that trend. Like much of Ray Bradbury's work it is marked by weirdness and wonder; a little more weird and it's pure fantasy, a little less and it's autobiography. Bradbury's mix makes for an fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable read!

What a sweet, nostalgic, eccentric read this was. The more Bradbury I read, the more I love him. First and foremost, his sense of humor is so unique and divine, and second, there is no other author in that genre who writes women the way Bradbury does. God, how I love Constance Rattigan in this book. Bradbury always has a very strong female character in his stories and the girls stand on their own as full fledged people.
The narrator in this particular story is basically a dream to read: he's qui More...

Some books you read and are pure entertainment and some you just get information from the book. This book is not only entertainment, but just plain brilliant. The characters, dialog and story are over the top. Over the years I have read a lot of Ray Bradbury's work. This books is so different from his normal, yet so similar in ways to his other work. There are so many interesting characters in this book. The dialog is great. The story has many twists and turns. You think you know how it will end More...

I had to reread Fahrenheit 451 to help my granddaughter write a paper, and I enjoyed it again; so I decided to try this newer Bradbury. Knowing that science fiction, horror, and supernatural are my very least favorite literature genres, I still gave it a shot. I gave up on it after about 4 chapters. All fluff - no substance. There seemed to be no plotline - just a lot of well-written scary language. I couldn't help comparing it to a sermon I heard the day before I tried reading the book. The pre More...

I stayed up into the wee hours to finish Death Is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury, which is first in the first in a set of three semi-autobiographical mysteries. I didn’t realize this at first and was pleasantly surprised to meet several characters from A Graveyard for Lunatics, the second book in the set. Both novels are more fragmented and surreal than the usual Bradbury—but then, I suppose memory often is fragmented and surreal, and Bradbury was drawing heavily on memories of his own life f More...

I liked this book. It was very interesting and kept my attention even though it didn't move at a particularly fast pace. Which isn't really a problem for me because I enjoy a good ponder. The characters were suitably flamboyant for this type of "noir" style book and therefore made reading this a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed how Mr. Bradbury alluded to many of the short stories that he has written over the years. That being said I, myself, really could have done with less offensive language More...

Death Is a Lonely Business
Ray Bradbury
278 pages, read it in paperback.

Ooh la la, a Noir set in 1949 Venice, California. Yes please.

I found this at a local book store in downtown Issaquah. I don't remember the name of the place but there are always books piled on the floor in boxes and if I am lucky I get the owner. The owner is helpful and nice, as well as his daughter. His wife and son on the other hand are usually less than helpful. Nonetheless here I was perusing the wares scattered across t More...

hooray for writers who write one book completely different from the rest of their ouevre. Haruki Murakami's 'Hard-boiled Wonderland,' a 1990s 'semiotics/akademickant' inflected surreal piece; Ray Bradbury's 'Death is a Lonely Business." no more martians, no more talking squids in outer-space; a spare, lyrical work inflected with a venice, california perpetually wrapped in fog and populated only by twisted figures including the unforgettable constance rattigan, ex-silent film star, filthy rich si More...

"Die kleine Stadt Venice, California, hatte zu jener Zeit vieles, was sie zum idealen Ort für Leute machte, die gern traurig sind."

Welch ein wunderbarer erster Satz!

"Death is a Lonely Business" ("Der Tod ist ein einsames Geschäft") ist ein Kriminalroman voll Nostalgie. Eine Geschichte von Einsamkeit und Verzweiflung. Für Leser, die gern traurig sind.

Das Schäbige und der Verfall sind in sprachliche Virtuosität und Eleganz gekleidet.
Eine Reminiszenz an die Filme der Schwarzen Serie des Hollywoods More...

When I read it for the first time, i found it really strange. It was just after i had read Dandelion Wine, such a different book.
I thought: "Is this really Bradbury?" I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.
Then I read it again. And again. I also read the Graveyard for Lunatics.. and I made up my mind, now this is one of the best books I've ever read. The story, the plot is not something special. But the way he writes, the way he describes things, he makes it all seem so real! and it's just a book.
t More...

I decided that I'm in the mood for a hard-boiled detective story. And I haven't read a Bradbury novel in a long, long time. Supposedly, the main character is based on some of Bradbury's own experiences while he was rising through the ranks of pulp fiction writers in the 1940's.

Update: I'm about 60 pages from the end, and I must admit, I'm having trouble getting through this book. Bradbury has populated his book with characters who are interesting, if not borderline preposterous. The same goes fo More...

Ray Bradburry ist ja eher für seien Sience-Fiction Literatur bekannt, dieses Buch aber fällt etwas aus dem Rahmen da es mehr ein Kriminalroman ist. An sich gefällt mir die Art des Autors indem er alles durch die Hauptperson erzählen lässt, und das Buch hat etwas von einem dreißiger Jahre Krimi, also eigentlich gar nicht so schlecht. Dennoch konnte mich das Buch nicht ganz überzeugen, die tausenden Adjektive die hier für teilweise recht seltsame Vergleiche herangezogen werden mit der Absicht dem More...

I have rarely been so surprised by the quality of a novel. I had never read any Bradbury before, and I was blown away by it's literary merit. With an absolute precision of language, he weaves scenes of dread, loneliness and utter terror with supreme brevity and anachronistic imagery. I felt like I was reading a heavily padded film-noir screenplay, and I checked IMDB to see if there had been a movie based on this book. As far as I can tell, there hasn't been. I think David Fincher should be alert More...

Не,не,не, много харесах "Вино от глухарчета", но това детективско фентъзи ми дойде в повече. Бредбъри е all over the place както се вика. Целият сюжет е разпокъсан, хаотичен и нестабилен през цялото време. Общо взето не знаеш какво четеш и какво по дяволите се опитва да направи авторът. Едва я дочетох. До колкото разбирам "Гробище за лунатици" е продължение, така че ще го пропусна. Ще се пробвам с марсианските хроники, па барем те ми се усладят.

Ray Bradbury, the undisputed Dean of American storytelling, dips his accomplished pen into the cryptic inkwell of noir and creates a stylish and slightly fantastical tale of mayhem and murder set among the shadows and the murky canals of Venice, California, in the early 1950s.

Listen to Death Is a Lonely Business on your smartphone, notebook or desktop computer.

A personal and deeply felt homage to the forces that shaped him as a writer and young man, Bradbury's elegiac tone is flawless and his riffs on the hard-boiled detective genre are interesting, but you never lose sight of the man behind the work. Bradbury's style in this novel is as signature and pleasing as ever. Don't concern yourself with the intricacies of plot here - enjoy the vivid, trans formative powers of Bradbury's imagination.

"Death is a lonely business," Says the creepy drunk on the midnight train. From the first We know that this man is a murderer but the hero never turns to look at him. First the Murderer then the murdered, when our hero discovers a body floating in an abandon lion's cage in a canal.

The hero has no name and the novel contains no chapters but the continuous narrative begs you to keep reading anyway and the name of the hero is obvious to anyone who has already fallen under the spell of Ray Bradbury More...

This one is bizzare. There is a struggling, young author of short stories in Venice, CA. His menagerie of odd friends begin to be visited by an unseen stranger and experience some weird accidents. The author becomes determined to find out who or what is behind it all, The backdrop to it all is the destruction of the old Venice pier and boardwalk area as it has passed it time.

All in all, it was a fun read.
Not one of Bradbury's best, but's still full of his whim.
The story doesn't exactly leave you at the edge of your seat, neither does it make you turn pages furiously. What it does is take you for a nice little joyride with good characters from a by-gone era.

If you need something to read in between books, this will make a good "filler". I say it in the best way possible.

I can't go on, sorry! The truth is I try hard, but this book is kind of confusing, you never know if he is talking about something that is happening or he is just having a nightmare. Maybe that is what nightmares are made of, confusion. Ray Bradbury might be a genius, but I fail completely to catch up with his style of telling stories.