This is the first Ray Bradbury book I've ever read, and I've always known him as a sci-fi writer. So, to read a murder-mystery was not something I expected.

I enjoyed the twists and turns to the story, and the fact that he borrows ideas from his own life (his best friend was a stop motion artist much like Roy, and he had worked at a movie studio as a screenwriter when he was young) makes the story even more compelling. In fact, the writer is a self-insert of Bradbury; he just doesn't have a name.

Overall it took me a while to get into the story, but it is a short novella with a compelling twist (even though I did see it coming half way through) so I recommend it to murder-mystery fans! ( )

I'm going to be completely honest with you. For most of this book, I had no idea what was going on. Previously I had only read one book by Ray Bradbury, and you can probably guess which book that is. I have a desire to read more by this author, and when the opportunity to read A Graveyard for Lunatics came about, I grabbed it. This is the second book in the Crumley Mystery series and even though I hadn't read the first book, I decided to jump in and hopefully land on my feet. I didn't. I landed on my bum. So let me just say, if you haven't read the first book, you should probably start there.

I listened to A Graveyard for Lunatics as an audiobook, and I have no regrets there. Andrew Garman did a fantastic job on the narration. The characters in this book are interesting and a bit bizarre at times. The story line was interesting. But if you asked me to describe this book in my own words, I couldn't. A lot was going on, and I'm not sure if I could wrap my head around all of it, at least not until the end when everything came together.

I'm certainly glad I did listen to this book. I may even go back and listen to/read the first book of this series sometime in the future. Bradbury has a lot of books/short stories to chose from, so if anybody has a recommendation, I'd be happy to hear it. I want to expand my reading horizon in the Bradbury universe.

*I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher for review purposes only. All opinions are my own. ( )

Chosen at random after hearing about his death. It took a while - almost 1/3 of the book - for me to care about the characters or what was happening. Set in Hollywood in the 50s. Stage lot next to a cemetery. "Once upon a time there were two cities within a city. One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred. One was warm and filled with ever-changing lights. And when the sun went down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of the living, it began to resemble Green Glades cemetery just across the way, which was the city of the dead." ( )

Having just finished Bradbury's Death Is a Lonely Business as 2017 came to an end, I went straight on to its sequel, A Graveyard for Lunatics, to begin the new year.

In a feat of love as much as verbal skill, Bradbury achieves cinematic magic on the unadorned page--much as his unnamed main character does as a Hollywood screenwriter.

LibraryThing lists this novel as book 2 in the "Crumley Mysteries" series, and I suppose you could call it that. But Crumley's presence is secondary at most. There is a mystery element to this story, all right, and Detective Lieutenant Crumley puts in an encore appearance, although again his role is more about moral support and reality check than it is about crime-solving prowess. Even in the thicket of his strange exotic garden, Elmo Crumley supplies the anchor that reminds us where the shoreline of fantasy stops.

But this novel is first of all a valentine to the movies and especially to the people whose vision and skills transform experience through their craft. It pays special tribute to special-effects man Roy Holdstrom, the fictional counterpart of Bradbury's close friend Ray Harryhausen, who is named in the dedication. Any film buff who dotes on the classics of early cinema should revel in this romp in the shadowlands between the real and the unreal. Although I'm not a true aficionado, with a library of collectibles and an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, I have seen a lot of old movies (some of them even before they were old), and I enjoyed Bradbury's evocation of the world beyond the guarded studio gates.

The tale involves the mysterious reappearance on Halloween night, 1954, of the body of a long-dead movie mogul whose twisted history still haunts the living, from a volatile studio executive to a gifted film editor to a paranoid fan whose only life is his obsession with movie memorabilia. The passion of creators for their creations is personified in the Harryhausen character and displayed across the spectrum of actors, directors, and other ancillary personnel, all of whom seem as touched by madness as the villains of the earliest horror pictures. The main character, who identifies himself as "the Crazy," follows a trail of hints and seeming coincidences to uncover an old secret as dark as any in the old black-and-white spookers of his own youth.

Even though I could see the solution coming, I enjoyed watching it play out against the permanently unreal backdrop of the motion picture world. ( )

After the near perfection of Death is a Lonely Business, I was a bit put off by Graveyard. The story didn’t welcome me, seduce me, like the first one did. It ended much better than it started, but I think it was because of how intensely autobiographical the characters, and especially their interactions, were. It seemed like for every reference or allusion I understood, ten flew by me. Inside joke type things that I’m sure for Bradbury’s friends, were a treat to read. For us outsiders, it made the story very dense and the dialog quite opaque. I found myself rereading sentences, not because they were wonderful as Bradbury’s sentences usually are, but because I couldn’t figure out what he meant with the first pass.

Eventually though, the story found some momentum and intrigue and even though I pegged the big plot reveal way ahead of time, it was still interesting to watch and I have the third in the series, the deliciously titled, Let’s All Kill Constance at the ready. ( )