Book Review: Hollywood Kills edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Sixteen well written stories

Cons: There is a sameness to the stories

The Bottom Line:

Stories for good cause

But feel the same by the end

Space out to enjoy

Stories for a Good Cause

While I wasn’t directly impacted by the wild fires that hit the Los Angeles area in January of 2025, I have friends who were.  So, the idea behind the Hollywood Kills short story anthology appealed to me.  The authors wrote stories, agreeing to donate their royalties to a recovery fund.  And, since I keep saying I am going to start reading the short story collections I am buying, I decided to start with this one.

This book contains sixteen stories set in and around Hollywood.  Over the course of the series, we meet just about everyone who works in the entertainment business from writers to character actors to caterers to directors to casting directors.  Unfortunately, for all of these people, they are about to find themselves playing some deadly games.  And yes, we do occasionally leave the Southern California area to find murder and mayhem on location.

I was already a fan of a couple of the authors in this anthology, and I enjoyed both Ellen Byron and Wendall Thomas’s stories.  I also found it fun that Ellen’s story features the main character from her Golden Motel series, making it a prequel.

Individually, each of these stories were good.  The plots were entertaining and kept me on edge.  The characters were fleshed out for the page time they had.  And the writing was always engaging.

The problem was, when I took the book as a whole, it started to feel the same, which took away from my enjoyment.  I haven’t run across this in the admittedly few other anthologies I’ve read.  I think it’s because this anthology was rushed out to start raising funds, and the authors were pre-selected.  I suspect some of these stories might have been left out of this book had been opened to submissions instead of asking authors to write stories and taking what they submitted.  This might have taken care of my feelings.

Now, let me be perfectly clear.  None of these stories are bad.  It’s just that, when read back-to-back, they don’t stand out.  And there are some creative stories here that broke the mold.

So, pick up Hollywood Kills.  But, instead of sitting down to read it, maybe read a story or two every week.  It will take longer to get through, but you’ll enjoy it more that way.