Robert Eversz Zero to The Bone

Zero to The Bone

Robert Eversz

Simon & Schuster, Feb 2006, $23.00, 271 pp.

ISBN: 0743250176

Ex-con Nina Zero a freelance photographer for the tabloid newspaper the Scandal Times, is realizing a dream by having a showing of her photographs in a respectable gallery. The model she used in the photographs never shows up, but Nina thinks Christine is just going to be fashionably late. A CD sent to the newspaper that she never viewed turns out to be a snuff film, and her co-worker Frank who watched it brings it to the showing for Nina to see.

The woman who was killed has a tattoo of Betty Boop on her left shoulder just like the one Christine has. A hiker stumbles over Christine's body in the Santa Monica Mountains. Both Nina and Frank decide to follow the story. Nina because she cares and would like to find the killer, and Frank because he thinks he can gain much mileage from the murder, which has all the ingredients for a sensational story, including the darkest side of S&M, where one is almost to the point of death. From the dark world that Christine inhabited and enjoyed, the investigation takes them to the corridors of the Hollywood elite where everyone has a price except for Nina.

Robert Eversz is a dark gritty urban noir thriller writer who imbues his characters with the full spectrum of human emotions and reflects that back to the reader who sees them in a disturbing light. The author brings every emotion out of the audience, from joy to sorrow and everything in between. Yet this stark novel has its light moments involving Nina's dog Rott, and its moving moments (Nina's father trying to reconnect with her). ZERO TO THE BONE is in a class by itself.