The Last Review (Coffee Levin Mysteries, Book 1) by Lucas Pogrzebny
About The Last Review:
TRUTH BECAME FICTION.
FICTION BECAME... DEATH.
Back in his native Buenos Aires, Polo Levington, a.k.a. "Levin",
a young freelance writer with a hidden phobia and an addiction to
coffee, is tasked by an old employer with one last job—writing an
article about The Last Farewell, a movie about to wrap
shooting. The assignment is simple: he has to go to the studio and write
about what he sees. Sounds easy enough, so he reluctantly agrees…
But
what starts with typical behind-the-scenes drama—with two aging stars
returning to the spotlight after a fatal tragedy decades prior—quickly
spirals out of control when an actor is stabbed while the camera rolls…
Soon,
between the props, make-up, and deceptions, death follows—and with it, a
chilling descent into madness and an unsolved murder of a famous
actress many years ago. Under the masks that the cast and crew all seem
to wear, something dark lurks, bending the worlds of fiction and reality
before Levin’s very eyes.
A crafty killer, capable of masking
murder as fiction; a mysterious honey-eyed actress eager to solve the
riddle as bodies pile up; a world-weary homicide detective, one case
away from promotion.
And among them all is Polo Levington,
seeking the truth—even if it brings him dangerously close to the trauma
that has marked him for life.
All the while, Levin must ask himself: Is it ever too late to face your fears?
Excerpt:
Prologue
The camera was still rolling when she was shot. Fiction and reality blurred for a fraction of a second, more than enough for the projectile to slip from one world to the next and pass straight through her head. Her crimson hair, like a fire in the night, hung in the air for the duration of a sigh, right in front of the group of false guests with glasses of non-alcoholic champagne in their hands. Everyone seeing everything, but not being able to observe anything.
The film crew did not realize what was happening until the body hit the floor of the film studio, collapsing on the fake wood and falling still. The scarlet liquid that began to spout, red like her hair, like her nails and like her lips, was the final touch to complete such a frame. As they looked at the body on the false floor and the blood flowing out of it, like a very well-accomplished cinematic technique, no one could help but think about that paradox: a character had come to life only for the actress who played her to lose her own.
And the onlookers remained like that, frozen like the body, and like everything else, except the camera, which kept rolling until someone dared to scream in horror.
An accident? Or something intentional? There was absolutely nothing that anyone could do. It would be a long while until anyone came to the “real truth” of the matter.
At that time, no one could imagine who would reach that truth, hidden under a strange progression of deaths that would happen in a film studio in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo twenty years later.
Chapter 01: When the Camera Goes Off
“Cut!”
Just as it had been easy for them to come to life with the word “action,” it was just as easy for those fictitious lives to evaporate when the director yelled “cut.” The main lights of the studio came on and then another kind of action began, with people coming and going, preparing what was to follow in that micro-world of fiction. The voices gave way to a noisy atmosphere where individual behaviors merged once again, and the attention in front of the camera shifted to the movement behind. There was something fascinating and at the same time exhaustive in the disparity of those scene setups that took hours rather than the minutes that the action took. Everyone who made up the crew of the film The Last Farewell, a team of no more than fifteen people, including its cast of four, could feel that.
Satisfied with what they had just filmed, Eralio Campos, director of the film, approached Julian Corcega, his assistant director. Eralio was dressed in solid black, with a turtleneck shirt, long sleeves rolled up, and worn-out jeans. His salt-and-pepper hair outlined a face of almost fifty, tanned and hardened by the profession and the years of filming outdoors. He was tall and thin, and whoever saw him could sense that he was someone special—a man with dark gray eyes, with a great sensitivity to art, who seemed to belong to the increasingly extinct auteur cinema. He had the habit of leaving the camera running for too long, until the shots convinced his own intuition. Although there was a monitor off to the side, Eralio preferred to see the image directly through the camera’s viewfinder. A consecrated filmmaker with his own method and essence. Julian Corcega, on the other hand, was seen as a man “in progress” and was well on his way to becoming what Eralio already was. About thirty-five years old, his face looked very young, although one could tell he was “doing the hours.” His appearance had an almost office-like efficiency, with a fitted shirt tucked inside a pair of perfectly ironed pants, polished shoes, and hair that had been waxed and combed. A pair of black suspenders completed his methodical appearance, which often led to him being confused with a press guest on the set or with an investor in the film. It was hard to see him for what he really was: the link between the various film departments, and someone who spent twelve hours locked up in the same studio along with everyone else. Even though there was a difference of almost twenty years between him and the director, when push came to shove, this hierarchy dissipated and one could see the pride in Julian Corcega’s expression.
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About Lucas Pogrzebny:
Lucas Pogrzebny (also published under Lucas Porzebny) began writing during his childhood, after discovering detective novels and getting a short story published in an interschool anthology. In his teens, however, he leaned towards acting, taking theater classes for more than a decade, and then pursuing studies in filmmaking and graduating as a director. He worked for several years as a sound and lighting designer, and as an assistant director and actor. He also ventured into advertising as an actor and model. In parallel to all this audiovisual journey, he resumed his passion for literature, and studied dramaturgy, crime novel, horror scriptwriting, and literary structure. He is also about to earn a diploma in criminology and criminalistics.
Lucas is a great admirer of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, of the classic crime novels and murder mysteries, and a film buff who loves American film noir, Korean cinema, Japanese horror, and Italian giallo.
In his spare time, he enjoys playing the guitar (a black vintage Strat) and spending time with his family. His hobbies include swimming, going to the movies, and reading. Oh, and he loves to drink coffee.
He lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he was born in August 1988.
He has been nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition.
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