Product Description

Renowned singer Gloire Stella has mysteriously disappeared. When a television producer tries to track her down, Gloire goes on the run. From the cliffs of Brittany to the back alleys of Bombay, Big Blondes is a riotous nonstop adventure for anyone who has ever wondered whether blondes really do have more fun.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1936550 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-19
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .84" h x 5.77" w x 8.69" l, .79 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 201 pages

From Amazon.com
A French television producer putting together an affectionate documentary series about famous show business blondes hires a detective agency to track down one of his personal favorites--a singer named Gloria Stella, whose brief burst of fame was cut short when she was jailed for pushing her lover off a roof. Now Gloria has changed her name and her appearance, she hides out in seedy seaside town and is quietly going crazy. That's the endearing premise of this wry and offbeat thriller written by popular French author Jean Echenoz and translated with perfect pitch by Mark Polizzotti. If you'd like to see what thriller readers in other countries are getting excited about these days, here's an easy way into another culture. Other books by Echenoz available in paperback: Cherokee, Double Jeopardy.

From Library Journal
When a television documentary producer sends a team of private investigators to locate ex-singer Gloria Stella, she flees, leaving the befuddled group always two steps behind her as she hops from one country to the next. Imbuing his novels with a decidedly film noir essence is French author Echenoz's (Lac, LJ 10/15/95) stock-in-trade, but the writing here is neither clever nor insightful enough to justify a vignette-like structure where nothing much happens despite plenty of atmosphere. Nor is it likely to keep the reader turning the pages. This short novel eventually grinds to a halt when the detectives finally catch up with Gloria in the final chapters, which could be called anticlimactic if the story had any arc to it at all. Readers expecting big laughs will be sorely disappointed; most libraries can pass on this one.?Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
When a television producer decides to do a documentary on famous blonds, he hires a detective agency to track down Gloire Abgrall, aka Gloria Stella, a former pop singer who disappeared after serving time in prison for the murder of her lover-cum-agent. Gloire hurls the first detective who locates her off a convenient cliff in Brittany, and, accompanied by a mysterious homunculus named Beliard, who might be only a figment of her imagination or just might be her guardian angel, she goes on the run, pursued by various detectives. Echenoz, winner of the Prix Medicis and European Literature Prize and author of three previous novels, including Double Jeopardy (1993), combines black humor with trenchant social commentary on the intrusive role the media plays in contemporary society and then tosses into the mix a dash of the supernatural (what is this Beliard, anyway?). Think, perhaps, Ross Thomas with a soupcon of magic realism. Nancy Pearl