Let's All Kill Constance

Ray Bradbury

It was a dark and stormy night when Constance Rattigan ran into the narrator/author's home. Constance had been a silent movie star. She was running away from her Hollywood home where she found two strange books on her lawn. They appear to be from 1900, sixty years before the novel's present, and seem to be books listing the dead. She is afraid Death is now after her. The first person narrator invites her to stay with him for the night.

When the narrator wakes up in the morning, she is gone. He contacts his policeman friend to help him find her. Before they are done he has pulled two more friends, one blind and one a movie director. The men follow the clues chasing after Constance. They keep finding people from her past. After they visit these people, they die within the next day. Their names had been specially marked in the odd books. They have to find Constance before she dies next.

Ray Bradbury is an author well reknown for his writing. When I think of him science fiction first comes to mind, including Farenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, and The Martian Chronicles. Let's All Kill Constance is the first non-sf book of his I read. It also was published in 2003.

Let's All Kill Constance was a disappointment. I kept getting lost in the book, not quite sure what was going on. I got the overall story, but sections of it were confusing. I chuckled when Bradbury would poke fun at himself, or came up with future story ideas (or they were future ideas in 1960, now they're classics). His relationship with his wife is another area where he has fun. Even the final conclusion was amusing and creative. But getting there was meandering and odd. You may read Let's All Kill Constance because it's a Bradbury novel, but there are many better ones out there.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury