Blues in the Dark is the first book I've read by this author. It's one that I'm glad that I read because it was interesting and the characters were well-developed.

I was really intrigued by the description of this book: old Hollywood, mysteries, unsolved crimes. But although it’s a fast paced read, I found that it dragged. The author has clearly done a lot of research, but hasn’t mixed in smoothly into the story, so often it feels like reading a Wikipedia page rather than a novel. Still, there’s plenty to enjoy, particularly if you want to know more about classic Hollywood.

A compelling noir mystery set during the 1940's in Hollywood. Parallel, alternating plot lines from the present to the 1940's. A gritty and rough thriller, which will appeal to today's audience.

Raymond Benson has done an admirable job in presenting in a noir mystery with a more modern up to date approach to its readers. Readers, in general, will not be disappointed.

I want to thank Net Galley for the advance copy to review.

So sorry I forgot to review this one after I read it!

Enjoyable noir thriller with a few problematic plot issues, but I enjoyed the characters, the ambiance and the music culture.

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

I enjoyed this mystery novel set in 1940's Hollywood. Karissa, a woman who is in the film industry, is looking for a home to rent and finds an old mansion to rent that belonged to a Hollywood Starlet who met a tragic end. Of course this makes Karissa interested in Blair, which leads her down the rabbit hole full of murder and deception.
This book didn't go the way I thought it would, which was a good surprise. Overall, I enjoyed this mystery.

Blues in the Dark is a Hollywood noir with parallel alternating plotlines from the 1940s and present day by Raymond Benson. Released 8th Oct 2019 by Skyhorse on their Arcade Crimewise imprint. It's 336 pages and available in hardcover and ebook formats.

The author uses the parallel story lines to pretty good effect here and main character Karissa (a filmmaker) becomes more and more involved in the 1940s life and death of femme fatale movie star Blair Kendrick after renting Blair's house which hasn't been changed much since her death in 1949. The plot revolves around dirty money, corruption, racism, sexism, and the motion picture industry of the golden age of Hollywood.

This is a gritty thriller; the language is rough, there's sexual content, murder, etc. The plotting and dialogue are well done, and the writing is entertaining - the author is a competent writer. I will say that the main plot twists are so heavily foreshadowed that I assumed they were meant to be known before the denouement reveal.

I would heartily recommend this one to fans of noir and golden age Hollywood. Highly readable and entertaining.

Four stars.

This was such an amazing read that I couldn’t put it down. It went everywhere with me. To the doctors office, the dentist, the eye doctor. IT WENT ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE. I was so sad when it ended that I immediately went and bought more books from this author!

Blues in the Dark begins when indie film producer Karissa Glover finds a rental offer she can’t refuse. It’s the mansion of the long-dead Blair Kendrick, still furnished, her clothes still in the closets, untouched since 1949, when she was murdered. And all for $1000 a month. An incredible deal and a built-in story, how can she resist? When she discovers that Blair, a white film star dated Hank Marley, a Black jazz musician, even before interracial marriages were legalized in California, the story strikes a chord with Karissa’s own history, a biracial woman who was adopted by a white family with no knowledge of her history.

As Karissa and her producer-partner Marcello research Blair and Hank’s story, someone is clearly trying to block them. They suspect it is Blair Kendrick’s former studio which was implicated in Blair’s death since the studio recalled all her films and won’t let them be shown. A business making a costly business decision is suspicious.



Although I thought Blues in the Dark has a great foundation for a story, I was disappointed in the writing. I didn’t find the seventy-year obsession with revenge that credible. Sure, the Hatfield and McCoy feud is legendary, but these were not Hatfields nor McCoys.

However, what was most difficult for me was the dialogue. Clearly, Benson did a lot of research on Black Hollywood and just could not bear to leave any of it out. There were a few conversations that felt like a Wikipedia download with different characters dropping nuggets off the notecards of research. Did you know Hatty McDaniel lived down the street? Research should form the context and atmosphere, not the dialogue. A paragraph of description would have given us an understanding of the neighborhood and its history without such an inauthentic conversation.

I thought the device of using a movie produced by Karissa to tell the story of Blair and Hank was ingenious, but I think Karissa and Marcello’s film was not well done. Flipping calendar pages, montages, and narration are such old-fashioned tropes to be used in a 21st-century film. Also, the contemporary film narrative used “Negro” rather than African-American or Black, striking a sour note. It’s one thing used in past events, but not in the narration.

Nonetheless, Karissa was a great character, with persistence, courage, and intelligence. She wanted information and she knew how to get, including going to the library and using microfiche. Nothing stopped her and she was thoughtful about her next steps in her investigation. Benson knows how to tell a story, I wanted to know what happened next and read the book through in two big bites. A disappointing book is not a bad book, it just is not as good as I thought it would be.

I received a copy of Blues in the Dark from the publisher through NetGalley.

Blues in the Dark at Skyhorse Publishing | Arcade Crimewise
Raymond Benson author site

I’ve never before read anything by Raymond Benson. I was curious about his Black Stiletto series and his James Bond books, but, you know -- so many writers, so little time. I was glad to get an advance readers copy of Blues in the Dark.

This book has a lot going for it: A 21st century movie production company is trying to make a film about a femme-fatale star of the 1940s. This involves an expose of seamy, sexist and sinister (don’t forget racist!) Old Hollywood.

The premise was intriguing. The alternating timelines are handled well. The research was apparently thorough.

What didn’t work: The writing was clumsy and repetitive, and could have benefited so richly from a vigorous edit that I assumed at first it was self-published. Nope. Skyhorse Publishing is a legitimate independent publisher, apparently one that takes a laissez-faire approach to content.

Plus, the ending was not just telegraphed but foreshadowed in nearly every chapter with what might as well have been neon arrows.

Many readers (a substantial number of us) have a taste for noir fiction that is rendered in clean, simple, sophisticated and intelligent prose. Alas, we are often disappointed.

Raymond Benson writes of the darker side of Hollywood and Los Angeles in the 1940s, the movie studios with their racism, sexism, controlling film stars, the corruption and the heavy involvement of the mob, actions and behaviour that continues to haunt the present in a narrative that goes back and forth in time. In the present, 46 year old mixed race producer Karissa Glover is on the verge of getting divorced from her cheating husband, Willy Puma, and in desperate need of a home. A fortuitous meeting with a real estate agent leads to her moving into an old mansion in the West Heights district of LA, also known as Sugar Hill, once an area where the black celebrities lived, such as the likes of Hattie McDaniel. Karissa is overjoyed to get the house at such an advantageous rent, it turns out it used to be the former home of the well known Blair Kendrick, a white film actress who played bad girls, the femme fatale of film noirs in the 1940s.

No-one else has lived in the house, and it contains some of Blair's possessions and mementos of her film career. All this sparks Karissa's interest in Blair who was tragically killed by the mob after apparently witnessing the murder of corrupt film studio head, Eldon, in 1949. None of Blair's films get shown, so little is known about her that Karissa finds herself delving into her life, becoming so curious and enthused that she and her business partner, Marcello, make the decision to make a film noir movie about her life. However, it appears there are powerful forces from the past that are determined that should not happen, as Karissa finds herself facing intimidation and death threats. In a narrative that includes Blair's life in the past, interspersed excerpts from a future film about Blair, Karissa uncovers the secrets of Blair's life and her taboo interracial relationship with the black jazz musician, Hank Marley, who disappeared in 1949.

Benson writes of the tinsel town, of Hollywood's criminal underbelly, its unsavoury past, the controlling film studios, with their fixers, past and present, the power they exercised against those who challenged them, and the racism they perpetuated. Karissa is the perfect protagonist to look into this seedy business as a mixed race woman, as she encounters the power of the Hollywood studios in the present, determined to prevent her from producing a film on Blair's life by whatever means necessary. This is a wonderfully entertaining and twisted read, its a beguiling look behind the glamour of Hollywood that I could not help but get immersed in. Many thanks to Skyhorse Publishing for an ARC.

I went back and forth one my rating for this book. It wasn't my favorite sort of book but I thought it was a tightly written book that feels easily adaptable into a movie (which I'm not always fond of).

What I liked was that it was an engaging mystery with plenty of plot twists, reasonably interesting characters and a resolution that I had figured out but felt satisfied by.

I wish it had been longer and that the author had delved deeper into the characters. Books that read easily and quickly can be satisfying but I love to deep dive into the characters in ways that don't translate as well to screen. I did feel that the author's background predisposed him to a more screen friendly storytelling style but it didn't detract from the book--it just left me wanting a bit more.

Not quite an old-style noir thriller, not quite a modern murder mystery, Blues in the Dark is - appropriately - something in between. Appopriate, because the action, too, shifts between two distict eras - the Hollywood of the 1940s and the present day, as a modern movie maker struggles to uncover the truth behind three high profile killings, committed seventy years before. And finds there are still people who don't want the truth to be told.

Chapters alternate between then and now, framed by the movie that is being made, and they're each short enough that the book rattles breathlessly along. Plenty of twists keep your attention in place (you may guess a few, but others will catch you cold), and the storytelling is strong.

Only the dialogue lets the book down - in part, anyway. The heart of the story is set against the racial divides of 1940s Hollywood, and it's good to have the precise situation explained; the changing laws that swept away barriers without really affecting attitudes.

Unfortunately, Benson's explanations read like they were cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia(they weren't, I checked... but they read like it), and they jar horribly. Not only that, but he keeps doing it, even repeating the same themes on occasion. It breaks the flow of the story and it almost knocked a star from my rating. In the end, though, it was a great read, even keeping me up late to finish it. So, highly recommended, but be warned....

Blues in the Dark by Raymond Benson is an enjoyable yet complex read. Lots of details in every part of the story. A story within a story. Very detailed history of Hollywood in the forties especially concerning interracial marriages and social taboos. Felt part docudrama and part history of Hollywood.

When Karissa Glover, a young film producer, moves into the opulent but fading mansion on South Adams Street that's been vacant since the death of Forties film star Blair Kendrick, she discovers that the pastv is very much alive in the present, and that the old house has a history that begs to be a movie itself. Interracial tensions are nothing new to karissa, a mixed race woman, and Sugar Hill, which was home to most of the black celebrities of that era, affords a rich store of stories, secrets, and murder for an interesting and attractive protagonist.

Blues in the Dark by Raymond Benson is more than just a mystery novel. It is also a tragic tale of romance and bigotry. There are two different story lines taking place in two different eras. First in present day Hollywood, film producer Karissa Glover meets a real estate agent who gives her a tip about a house that has just come up for rent. Karissa can't believe her good fortune when she tours the home that has been abandoned for decades and learns a little about its former owner, hollywood femme fatale Blair Kendrick, and how affordable the rent is. Upon further research, Karissa learns about Blair's untimely death and the circumstances surrounding it and the death of her lover, Hank Marley, and decides she wants to dig deeper into their story and make a film about the couple.

The second story line follows Blair Kendrick, new to 1940s Hollywood, as she begins to pursue her dreams as an actress. In only her second audition, she lands a role of a "bad girl" in a movie. While on the set she meets the band who plays a part in the film, and their leader, Hank Marley. Now, in the 1940s, it was against the studio's policy that Blair is under contract with for these two to date, as Hank is an African American and Blair is white. It was also against California, and many other states laws for interracial couples to be together, or married. We get to see their story unfold and learn what happened to both of the lovers. Speaking of the studio Blair works for, we also get a peek at the darker side of Hollywood and how much sexism and mysoginy there was. As studio head Eldon tries to get Blair to sleep with him as he does his other actresses.

The author does a wonderful job weaving the two time lines together and developing the main characters with a rich history. His descriptions of the jazz clubs and other places in old Hollywood are so rich you could smell the cigarette smoke and hear the jazz Hank and his band play. I did figure out part of the plot twist about halfway through, but it didn't stop me from flying through the pages to see how the author was going to bring it all together. I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.

I want to thank Raymond Benson, Skyhorse Publishing, and NetGalley for providing me with a gifted copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This was an excellent read. The book captured my interest immediately. The settings and time period really drew me in and had me invested in the story and the character's lives. A sign of a great book is to care for a character like you know them personally and this book does that. Blues in the Dark is well written and unique. What a page turner!