Death Is a Lonely Business

Death Is a Lonely Business is a mystery novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1985. The story, set in 1949, is about a series of murders that happen in Venice, California, then a declining seaside community in Los Angeles where Bradbury lived from 1942 to 1950. The main character and narrator (who never mentions his name) is a sensitive, modest writer, with a girlfriend studying in Mexico City. In the course of the story he meets Elmo Crumley, a detective who helps him solve the mystery behind all the semi-murders occurring among a series of eccentric characters in the forgotten town.

Death Is a Lonely Business
First edition cover
Author	Ray Bradbury
Cover artist	Fred Marcellino
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Mystery
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	October 1985
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	278pp
ISBN	0-394-54702-0 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC	12189137
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Class	PS3503.R167 D3 1985
Preceded by	The Halloween Tree
Followed by	A Graveyard for Lunatics

The book evokes both the milieu and style of other mystery writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Ross Macdonald, all of whom Bradbury names in the book's dedication, and James Crumley, after whom Bradbury named his detective. The main character is based on Bradbury himself from a period of his life just before his marriage and his success with The Martian Chronicles.

Two sequels followed: A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let's All Kill Constance (2003), advancing the writer's career to 1954 and 1960, respectively.

References

"Dwarfed By Ancient Archetypes," Time magazine review.
Brown, Charles N.; William G. Contento. "The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1998)". Retrieved 2007-12-13.
"Google Books

External links

Death Is a Lonely Business title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Ray Bradbury
Bibliography (Short fiction)
Novels	The Martian Chronicles (1950) Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Dandelion Wine (1957) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) The Halloween Tree (1972) Death Is a Lonely Business (1985) A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) From the Dust Returned (2001) Let's All Kill Constance (2002) Farewell Summer (2006)
Short stories	"Hollerbochen's Dilemma" (1938) "The Scythe" (1943) "I, Rocket" (1944) "The Lake" (1944) "Frost and Fire" (1946) "The Million Year Picnic" (1946) "The Small Assassin" (1946) "I See You Never" (1947) "Fever Dream" (1948) "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" (1948) "The Long Years" (1948) "Mars Is Heaven!" (1948) "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949) "The Exiles" (1949) "Marionettes, Inc." (1949) "The Long Rain" (1950) "The Rocket" (1950) "There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) "The Veldt" (1950) "Ylla" (1950) "Embroidery" (1951) "The Fog Horn" (1951) "Here There Be Tygers" (1951) "The Pedestrian" (1951) "The April Witch" (1952) "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) "The Wilderness" (1952) "The Flying Machine" (1953) "The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind" (1953) "The Meadow" (1953) "The Murderer" (1953) "Sun and Shadow" (1953) "All Summer in a Day" (1954) "The Dragon" (1955) "The Aqueduct" (1979) "Banshee" (1984) "The Toynbee Convector" (1984) "Is That You, Herb?" (2003)
Collections	Dark Carnival (1947) The Illustrated Man (1951) The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) The October Country (1955) A Medicine for Melancholy (1959) The Day It Rained Forever (1959) The Small Assassin (1962) R Is for Rocket (1962) The Machineries of Joy (1964) The Vintage Bradbury (1965) S Is for Space (1966) Twice 22 (1966) I Sing the Body Electric! (1969) Ray Bradbury (1975) Long After Midnight (1976) The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979) The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980) The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1980) Dinosaur Tales (1983) A Memory of Murder (1984) The Toynbee Convector (1988) Classic Stories 1 (1990) Classic Stories 2 (1990) The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991) Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991) Quicker Than the Eye (1996) Driving Blind (1997) Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001) One More for the Road (2002) Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003) The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004) A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007) Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007) A Pleasure to Burn (2010) The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury (2011, 2014)
Plays	The Meadow (1947) The Flying Machine: A One-Act Play for Three Men (1953) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972) Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975) The Martian Chronicles (1986) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1986) Fahrenheit 451 (1986) Dandelion Wine (1988) The Veldt (1988)
Adaptations	It Came from Outer Space (1953) Moby Dick (1956 screenplay) "I Sing the Body Electric" (1962) The Autumn People (1965) Tomorrow Midnight (1966) Fahrenheit 451 (1966) The Picasso Summer (1969) The Illustrated Man (1969) The Martian Chronicles (1980 miniseries) The Electric Grandmother (1982) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) Bradbury 13 (radio series, 1983-84) Fahrenheit 451 (1984) "The Burning Man" (1985) The Veldt (1987) The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV series, 1985-86, 1988-1992) The Halloween Tree (1993) Dandelion Wine (1997) The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998) A Sound of Thunder (2005) Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis (2008) The Whispers (2015) Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
Miscellaneous	Futuria Fantasia (1939-1940) The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978) Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) It Came from Outer Space (2003 book)
Characters	Guy Montag
Related	Bettina F. Bradbury (daughter) Spaceship Earth Bradbury Landing Ray Bradbury Award Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury Dandelion crater

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