I had very mixed feelings about Flicker. It's a great read, with some wonderfully memorable characters and lots of interesting detail about the film world in the United States in the 50s and 60s (not a subject I know much about, but I imagine film buffs will enjoy it even more than I did). The plot, however, is centred on a grand international conspiracy and just doesn't carry its weight. The problem isn't so much that it strains suspension of disbelief, though it does fit oddly with the realism of the rest of the novel, but that it just isn't interesting: Another international conspiracy dating back to the Cathars and the Templars? Yawn. I think Flicker would have been much better as a "straight" novel.

March 1995

External links:

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- more fiction
- books about film + television