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Hollywood and LeVine
by
Andrew Bergman
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Hollywood and LeVine |
| Author: | Andrew Bergman |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 1975 |
| Length: | 197 pages |
| Availability: | Hollywood and LeVine - US |
| Hollywood and LeVine - UK | |
| Hollywood and LeVine - Canada | |
| Le pendu d'Hollywood - France | |
| Le Vine & Humphrey Bogart - Deutschland | |
| Hollywood y Levine - España |
- The second in the series of Jack LeVine novels
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Our Assessment:
B : solid Chandler-imitation, with the Red Scare approaching
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| The NY Times | . | 4/9/1975 | Richard R. Lingeman |
| The NY Times Book Rev. | . | 7/9/1975 | Newgate Callendar |
| Sunday Times | . | 16/5/1976 | . |
From the Reviews:
- "It's a good premise, and I like Bergman's idea of bringing back the forties private eye and his sense of humor; if the dialogue doesn't snap and crackle, as did Chandler's, it at least pops. But still a lot more could have been done with plot and atmosphere, and the result is somewhat thin chicken soup, which is no kind of soup for a Jewish private eye to find himself in." - Richard R. Lingeman, The New York Times
- "If all this seems terribly forced and contrived, it isn't. Bergman has a flip, easy style, and Hollywood and LeVine goes along with even more confidence and flair than was evident in The Big Kiss-Off of 1944. Jack LeVine may be a composite of the private-eye species, but he has a mind of his own and is infinitely easier to take than most of his confreres." - Newgate Callendar, The New York Times Book Review
- "Vastly entertaining, but not without its sober side." - Sunday Times
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
Author Andrew Bergman introduced his New York PI Jack LeVine in The Big Kiss-Off of 1944; here, in the second installment of the series, three years have passed -- good years, business-wise, with so many of the returning soldiers hiring: "shamuses, strictly on the q.t., to find out what their little women had been doing to keep busy during the big war", but things are now slowing down.
Conveniently, then, a college classmate of LeVine's, twice Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Walter Adrian, comes to town and wants to hire Bergman.
Despite his success, Adrian is having problems with the negotiations over renewing his contract at Warner -- and, beyond that: "It's hints, rumors, feelings that I get": something is wrong.
Adrian offers to fly LeVine out to California and pay good money for a ten-day investigation, and LeVine sighs, seeing:
But he was so obviously scared and such a pigeon for anybody with an angle that I knew I had to climb in the boat with him, leaky as it might be.So the NY PI heads to Hollywood -- where he can correct people on the pronunciation of his name (they tend to 'Levine' (presumably: "Lev-een')) by explaining:
"It's LeVine," I told him. "Like Hollywood and Vine."Of course, there's some culture shock -- "It was a foreign land" -- but soon enough LeVine is also in more familiar territory, investigating murder. (The first one is meant to look like a suicide, but from the beginning he's not convinced.)
Walter's Communist Party affiliations are clearly part of what's behind whatever is going on here -- and others in his Communist-sympathizing circle are also possibly in danger. Soon enough, LeVine comes across a young congressman who is sniffing around here, preparing for the hearings planned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, certain that there are a lot of bad (read: red) apples here in Hollywood that pose a great danger to the American way.
There's also a woman to help LeVine takes his mind off things for a while -- except that she is among those in the gravest danger. (The speed with which this affair gets going seems a bit ... inappropriate, but otherwise it mostly works; it also allows Bergman to write a rather extended and detailed sex-scene). The good he gets early on -- "Let it be, LeVine. Don't get into a mess" -- ios good and sensible, but he simply can't walk away.
It comes to a dramatic show-down, LeVine trying desperately to save his lady in great distress -- with him getting a big assist from none less than Humphrey Bogart. It's a bit over the top, but makes for a decent climax -- with LeVine then slowly making his way back to New York by train.
Like the first volume in the series, Hollywood and LeVine is decent imitation Chandler, and the case rubs nicely on the rising Red Scare and how the authorities approached that. The name-dropping adds a bit of fun, as LeVine gets to rub shoulders -- well, brush shoulders, in passing as he rushes around ("'Hey, Mister,' he said amiably. 'Where's the fire ?'" -- but LeVine doesn't even have time to respond to Henry Fonda) --, with only two (Bogart and the congressman) really getting in on any of the action. There's a humorous touch, too, but overall Bergman, like LeVine, takes the whole thing pretty seriously. The reasoning behind the crimes -- at least the murders, if not the bigger witch-hunt -- is a bit far-fetched, but it'll do, too.
A perfectly fine little noirish period-piece about that time and milieu.
- M.A.Orthofer, 14 August 2026
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Hollywood and LeVine:
- Mysterious Press publicity page
- Gallimard publicity page
- See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
- See Index of Contemporary American fiction
- See Index of Series and Sequels under review
- See Index of Real People in Works of Fiction
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American author and screenwriter Andrew Bergman was born in 1945.
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© 2026 the complete review
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