The Girl From Hollywood, Edgar Rice Burroughs

   I used to love the Tarzan series. I still enjoyed rereading the first novel in the series. I also used to love the Martian tales and some of his other works. I like the ideas, still, but his writing style is no longer of great appeal to me. It's free at Goodreads.com.
   This story reads like a tale told to warn good families against the dangers inhereint in allowing your innocent daughters to go to Hollywood. Maybe it's a fair warning. What with Weinstein's lecherousness becoming public and the inspiration behind the #metoo movement, perhaps it's not so hard to see that the cliché is as relevant today as it was then.
   Girls become victims of a strong narcotic. It kills one, and nearly kills the other. The director is the man behind it all. Though, one might make the effort to point out that he was also an addict to the drug.
   The story takes place during the Prohibition era. Shannon, the main character, manages to escape the drug and the director and finds herself in a rural area some hours drive away from Los Angeles. She falls in love with Custer Pennington.
  Somehow, as these stories go, the director manages to find her by accident while trying to film on the property of her host. He finds himself on the wrong side of a bullet due to what he had done to ruin a sister of another character Guy.
   I don't recommend reading this book. In fact, there's a really good chance that this is the last time I will read another Burroughs' book. His fiction translates well into movies and graphic novels. But I can no longer tolerate his cardboard cutout characters. It just doesn't cut it for me anymore.