What matters here is that at thirty-three Henry Baum’s a veteran. A writer of more than ten years.

Henry Baum grew up in Los Angeles. More precisely, with the sons and daughters of Hollywood’s sun-stroked elite. In all likelihood this accounts for his preoccupation with celebrity and fame in these two novels. This is just a hunch, a point of fact I cannot corroborate. Whatever the case, there is a sweeping attraction and repulsion to Hollywood and celebrity in these two works that is both compelling and vexing. In both ‘North of Sunset’ and ‘Oscar Caliber Gun’ this celebrity-obsession propels and dominates the narrative. The books taken together offer a devout meditation on the cost and un-reality of fame.

Needless to say then, the cult of celebrity, whatever it is, is a topic that weighs heavily on the author’s heart and he explores it throughout ‘North of Sunset’ with a thought-provoking deftness and lucidity. In both books Baum’s response to it is an obsessive violence, an unnerving chronicling and cataloguing. In Baum’s fictional world the iniquity and shallowness of Hollywood is enough to drive a man gleefully to murder. But at times the antagonism projected by the characters in ‘North of Sunset’ is a bit heavy-handed. This happens mostly in the first third of the novel before the plot fully surfaces. At worst these bits read like the bile-filled whining of a man immersed in the decadence of Hollywood but not a part of it. Of someone camped outside the gates of the kingdom, nose pressed up against the wrought iron, mad for a taste, but forever denied admittance; like the pissed off cabana boy who swabs the rich prick’s shit-caked toilets all day but never gets to cop a feel off the desperately horny housewife lounging by the pool. But that’s Hollywood for you…

The main thrust of ‘North of Sunset’ focuses on the breakdown of a man who has everything. Movie star Michael Sennet—“The Sensitive Cowboy,” “The Next James Dean”—belongs to a different era and feels the eyes of Old Hollywood upon him, watching with approval. But Michael Sennet has a problem. His agent, Marty Goldfarb, won’t let him direct a feature, a 19th Century Russian period piece. And Goldfarb is right to trust his instincts. But to Michael Sennet this acuity is the ultimate slap in the face. Goldfarb’s reluctance and disbelief in Sennet’s abilities rocks Michael’s fragile ego to the core. Sennet was, after all, a great film star, wasn’t he? How dare this “overgrown telemarketer” question his abilities?

Sennet copes with this defeat by sleeping with the first adoring but interchangeably vacant beauty he encounters, here Goldfarb’s young, red-headed secretary, conveniently waiting outside the conference room door. Their affair begins dispassionately over lunch and ends with a lustily torrid romp that same afternoon. Here’s a post-coital snippet:

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I mean can you believe it? Cause I can’t. Michael fucking Sennet. This is like every girls’ fantasy, know that?”

“Yes I know,” Michael said, pleased. “But remember what I said about the tabloids.”

Persephone jumped on the bed half-dressed and lay by his side. Her shirt ran up to just the end of her thighs.

“I would never do that,” she said, brightly.

“I would even give you money not to talk.”

She shook her head gravely, perish the thought. “Oh, I couldn’t take money from you.” She patted the bed, smiling. “This was payment enough.”

“All right then.”

Persephone got off the bed and continued to dress.

“Your job is too important, you know?” she said. “I mean, you’re famous. And you make movies. I would never do anything to jeopardize that.” (54)

But the real trouble for Michael Sennet begins when Paparazzi photographer Frank Vicente — vanity plate PAPRAZI — blackmails Michael with salacious pictures he snapped from their afternoon tryst. Simultaneously, the Vanity Plate Killer is on the loose, stalking and murdering people because of their personalized license plates.

The first Vanity Plate Killing documented in ‘North of Sunset’ is White Dreadlocks. And in the VPK’s twisted, zealot’s mind that is reason enough to kill:

…The guy was driving a Subaru hatchback with a surfboard in the back, blonde hair, with the license plate LV2SURF. He looked like a driving stereotype. Worse yet, that blonde hair was matted into dreadlocks. Nothing so bad as a white guy adopting black style and carrying it around with a pride that didn’t belong to him.

White Dreadlocks stopped in a surf shop and left carrying a brown paper bag. Then he went to a natural food store and came out with some kind of sandwich filled with sprouts. Everything he did was a California cliché. That was enough reason to keep following him.

…Some people just plainly deserved to die. It was the small annoyances that deserved to be punished most. The small annoyances lingered like an incurable but undying disease until you became tense and bitter and sick and didn’t know why. Dreadlocks represented how little sense people had. It didn’t seem that hard to be a normal person but people generally didn’t know how to dress or talk or see. Dreadlocks deserved to die for his haircut alone. (57-58)

So sets off the drama and the action of ‘North of Sunset’. What happens next? Does godlike Michael Sennet pay the extortion money to protect his privacy and maintain his image? It is not my intention to give away the sleight of hand used to reveal the intersection of these two parallel-warped lives in this classic, smart thriller. I’ll let Baum do that. He’s worked too hard not to. Read ‘North of Sunset’.

Mike Ferraro is a writer and rocker living in a New Jersey suburb of New York City. In 2001 he completed an honors thesis at Rutgers University entitled "The Only Freckle-Faced Wop on Earth: Identity, Anger and Shame in the Early Novels of John Fante." Mike is currently at work on a first novel, Due Diligence, and a full length collection of home recordings. He also paints. For more info visit www.mikeferraro.net , or email: info@mikeferraro.net.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.