Ticket To Hollywood (Literary Fiction)
By Gary Reilly
Running Meter Press publisher@runningmeterpress.com
SBN #978-0984786015
Price $13.01
216 Pages
Rating 5-Stars
“A Wonderful Read”
Brendan Murphy, a taxi driver in Denver has a set of rules he lives by
while driving a cab, one of which is never get involved with his passengers.
Unfortunately, that’s usually the first rule he breaks. And it always leads to
trouble. Picking up a fare, the young girl is attending the Mile Hi Film
Festival, and dressed like a flapper from the 1920s. She looks 18, and tipsy on
vodka. It’s none of his business until she leaves her purse in the back seat
containing a roll of hundred dollar bills. It’s time for Murph’s shift to end,
but he wants to find the girl and return the purse. Circumstances intervene,
and before the case is over, the girl comes up missing, is found, and then
disappears again – to Hollywood.
The character of Murph is a fascinating individual who can’t seem to
help himself in getting involved when someone is in trouble. After struggling
through seven years of college, he feels his true calling is driving a taxi,
though he has a dream of becoming a novelist some day – and has the rejected and
uncompleted manuscripts to prove it. Each story is told in a literary style,
with a simple plot and interesting character. Murph eats hamburgers three times
a day, his breakfast entails Twinkies and a Coke, and he lives on the top floor
of an apartment building he called his crow’s nest, because he can see across
the rooftops of Denver. Instead of gun battles and fistfights, Murph throws
philosophical advice to all of his passengers. A wonderful read.
The cover art for the Asphalt Warrior series is also quite interested.
Done in a retro style, they feature the taxi as the commanding figure within
the central scene. “Ticket To Hollywood” has my favorite cover so far, but they
are all good. The art is by John Sherffius, and the cover design is by Rebecca
Finkel.
Tom Johnson
Echoes Magazine
Sounds like an interesting story. I'll have to check it out.
ReplyDeleteGary passed away a couple years ago, and left quite a few unpublished manuscripts. The Asphalt Warrior series were among them - ten or eleven books. His friends are bringing them out as they can. They published the first three already, and told me two more would be released around November this year.
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