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Dead Famous Ben Elton 9780552999458 Books

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Dead Famous Ben Elton 9780552999458 Books

One contestant in a reality TV show is murdered. Who did it? Ben Elton became a household name in the UK back in the eighties for his stand up political satire. In this novel, he wants us to know how bad reality TV shows are and how shallow everyone - not just the contestants - connected with them is. The plot and characters are used to make clever points, as is Ben's style. Sometimes, he takes a point and labors it into the ground, as is also his style. But it's all a bit one-dimensional (especially the characters) and the ending serves up what amounts to a drawing room unveiling of the villain in a scene so hammy it should be served with pickle and bread. Oddly enough, The Hunger Games achieves everything (I think) Ben was trying to do with this novel (using reality TV to say something clever about The State Of Things), but it does so with a great deal more subtly, sophistication and all round depth. If you like Ben Elton, you'll like this, though. You have to admire his sheer energy, if nothing else.


Tags : Dead Famous [Ben Elton] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div><div>One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, and forty microphones. Everybody knows the rules—total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. However,Ben Elton,Dead Famous,Transworld Publishers,0552999458,Mystery & Detective - General,British Broadcasting Corporation,Murder - Investigation,Mystery fiction,Reality television programs - England - London,Television serials - England - London,FICTION General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Mystery & Detective General,General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern fiction,MysterySuspense

Dead Famous Ben Elton 9780552999458 Books Reviews

Ben Elton writes extremly well and you really can feel the caracters ITS intriguing and highly entertaining
As a Big Brother (US) fan, I found this extremely entertaining & well-written. Some of the British accents & slang was a bit rough, but I know I'll never look at BB the same. I highly recommend for a great read, I couldn't put it down!
Read this book when it was first published, and it was fantastic then and still is. Elton's writing is spot-on, laugh out loud funny and really hits its target. He's so right the war on drugs has dragged on even more than the war in Iraq and it's time to go back to basics and answers that might work. And it's a terrific novel with wonderful characters as well.
Ben Elton is easily my favourite author. Not sure why he doesn't receive wider recognition, particularly in the US. High Society, like a lot of Ben Elton books, is ahead of its time in that it identifies and explores issues that currently have little support, but will be mainstream issues in a few years time. And like most of Ben Elton's books, it's very moving, funny and compelling reading. This was the first Ben Elton book I purchased and is still my favourite.
Normally I really like Elton's books-this one was just too much. It's a commentary on the war on drugs-but with all sorts of characters-politican, rock star, homeless teen, and the only thing they have in common is drugs. Each one could have been a story on their own. Either the book should have been 75 pages shorter or condensed somehow-it was just too much. By the middle, I just wanted it to be over.
Ben Elton takes on the subject of drugs in Britain through the eyes of a rock star, a transplanted Scottish teenage girl in Birmingham, and a back-bench MP. All three are portrayed with humour and sensitivity in their various encounters with drugs. The rock star, who is given an endearing Brummie accent (it might not be easy for Americans to follow, but it is worth the effort) struggles constantly to reform, ultimately meeting the teenager in a doorway inadvertently one night after being mugged and robbed of his possessions. After she is recaptured by her pimps, his life is transformed in a quest to find her. But it is the story of the MP that is most entertaining and captivating. Peter Paget's speech to the house becomes a bill to legalize all drugs and undermine the dealers and their criminal world. Paget becomes a national hero, and his family--especially his elder daughter--likewise transforms into loves of the nation, until it all goes badly wrong through an affair with his youthful, but unstable secretary. The media's power to heroize and then scorn is well captured in this brilliantly written and absorbing book, the best of the four I have read by Elton so far. Ultimately the lesson may be that there are many sides to the "war on drugs,"but no consensus. And we are left to wonder whether in fact legalization is a possible answer.
_Dead Famous_ was recommended to me by a colleague who knows I love a good mystery. _Dead Famous_ is so much more than just a well-written whodunnit. On the surface it is a classic "closed door" murder 10 contestants compete in a reality television show, their every action and word recorded by dozens of microphones and cameras throughout the house. In spite of the close scrutiny, however, one of the housemates is murdered - and the culprit is unidentified. Elton jumps back and forth between the police investigation and the events leading up to the murder, keeping readers guessing as to not only who the victim is (we don't find out until almost 3/4 through the book) but what the possible motive may be. It is a brilliant new take on an old mystery device.

Added to this, however, is a satirization of the ubiquitous generational division (young, beautiful contestants, each wanting their 15 miutes of fame; young, hip police officers who have watched the show and believe they know the suspects from what they've seen on T.V., and a curmudgeonly older lead investigator who is out of touch with pop culture) as well as a biting social commentary on reality television in general. On the premise of the program, Elton writes, "Marvelous! ... An opportunity to spend an entire evening watching someone you don't know being asked to leave a house you've never been to by a group of people you've never even met and of whom you'll never hear of again. It's hard to imagine a more riveting scenario." On the people who are in the show and who produce the show, Elton writes, "It's Stockholm Syndrome, you know ...When captives fall in love with their tormentors ... and begin to rely on them, to trust them. I mean, how can that girl not have realized that as far as we're concerned she's a prop, and extra, to beused, abused and utterly misrepresented as we see fit?"

The structure, the premise, the writing and the portrayal of both contestants in and producers of reality television all warrant five stars. This was my first Ben Elton book, but if this is at all indicitive of his work, I will be sure to read more by him. I highly recommend _Dead Famous_.
One contestant in a reality TV show is murdered. Who did it? Ben Elton became a household name in the UK back in the eighties for his stand up political satire. In this novel, he wants us to know how bad reality TV shows are and how shallow everyone - not just the contestants - connected with them is. The plot and characters are used to make clever points, as is Ben's style. Sometimes, he takes a point and labors it into the ground, as is also his style. But it's all a bit one-dimensional (especially the characters) and the ending serves up what amounts to a drawing room unveiling of the villain in a scene so hammy it should be served with pickle and bread. Oddly enough, The Hunger Games achieves everything (I think) Ben was trying to do with this novel (using reality TV to say something clever about The State Of Things), but it does so with a great deal more subtly, sophistication and all round depth. If you like Ben Elton, you'll like this, though. You have to admire his sheer energy, if nothing else.