_________ Up

Charlie Chaplin appears simultaneously in over 200 places across the country. Lee Duncan tries to save him from crashing into a sure death trap while floating helplessly into the California coastline. Hugo Black is upset when Chaplin doesn't show for his planned appearance at a Texas railway station. But the real Charlie Chaplin knows nothing of this whole plot. And after that story line dissolves by page 10, neither does the reader. Which is too bad, because the idea was what intrigued me to pick the book up in the first place.

So instead we're left with 3 mildly connected story lines in the lives of Chaplin, Duncan, and Black during the misery of World War I. One is a famous actor who tries to prove his worth by stumping for the war rather than enlisting. One is a wannabe actor who is forced into enlisting. And the other just enlists.

These 3 plot lines are interesting enough for awhile, but this was one of those books where the last 100 pages or so just felt like labor. And not the good kind. A majority of this book was entertaining and seemed to have a good feel for the mood of the times around WWI (I say "seemed" because I was born 69 years after war's end) but I think the 3-story format might have been too ambitious and the connections between them too loose to sustain that entertainment throughout the whole thing.

However, I did get to read about Charlie Chaplin, World War I, the origins of Rin Tin Tin, and a spectacularly scheming Jewish family. And I did enjoy over half the book. So all in all I think I'd call it a modest success.