I’ve been a big fan of Russell C Connor after reading his great novel “Good Neighbors“ some years back. As such, I’d been looking forward to reading a trilogy of novels he did centered around the Hollywood film industry. “Second Unit” is the first in that series.

The setup, in brief, is as follows. Davis and Jared, two men who operate a second unit camera operation in Hollywood, are hired to work on a film by a famed German splatter horror director named, ironically, enough, Torsten Gross. After some time on the job, they notice that the director’s actors, after seemingly being actually killed in disturbingly brutal death scenes during shooting, return to life, but changed. (This aspect of the plot brings to mind a certain Herschell Gordon Lewis film from the sixties.) The mystery builds from there.

This is fun, action horror. There’s no deep rumination on the nature of grief or man’s dark nature here. There are several dialogue chuckles, and I had a total “laugh out loud at Starbucks” moment towards the very end.

The beginning was a bit more soap opera-ish than I would’ve liked, but things did get going.

Connor’s prose is always solid, and I appreciate his very creative metaphors.

One thing that was a bit of a kick for me: the West Los Angeles office in which the two main characters operated in was a couple blocks from where I lived for several years. I love those little moments in fiction.

Five stars