Evan Richardson

When your plans for Saturday night include murder., July 20, 2014 
          by 
          Kentucky Quacker "Kentucky Quacker"
          This review is from: Truck Stop (Kindle Edition) 
          "Truck Stop" is author Evan Richardson’s second book and marks his debut as a novelist writing in the time-honored gritty noir style. It’s a real departure from his engaging memoir about his career arc beginning as a model, fashion illustrator and his enduring profession as a top “Star Shiner”, a pioneer celebrity make-up artist. Mr. Richardson’s novel is more than homage to the past giants of the literary genre such as James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Hughes and Cornell Woolrich with an unusual twist using the setting of a rural, roadside honkytonk adding an element of dense, southern gothic atmosphere. You can almost spell the stale beer and congealed grease of hundreds of burgers consumed by the patrons. In interviews, the author has stated he has drawn upon memories of his small-town attorney father’s occasional murder cases rife with jealous impulse and avaricious intent. The characters are updated and written with an artist’s eye for detail. What’s next for the talented author?

Synopsis: TRUCK STOP (murder/crime/thriller):Amazon.com ISBN-13:978-1499694666 
          ISBN-10: 1499694660 
          
          When Lulu Mae married Hank, she thought he’d help her become her dream of being a country western singer. But when she realized that all Hank wanted was a wife and for Lulu Mae to waitress in his honky-tonk truck stop saloon, as she had at the diner where he met her, she spitefully began an affair with the handsome new bartender, Brad.
          
          Then a car containing two of the main characters goes over a hill and crashes to the bottom with a tremendous explosion, destroying most of the evidence as to the cause. The sheriff’s department is quick to attribute the tragedy to a faulty accelerator, but crafty old Sheriff Bob, after fifty years on the police force, secretly suspects it was murder.
          
          As the law scrambles to piece together the event with what evidence they have, the perpetrators of the crime try to wangle out of the hands of justice as the plot thunders to a dynamic conclusion where everyone has their final rendezvous with destiny to even the score in this lurid tale of obsessive sexual desire, murder, greed, and betrayal in a small rural Kentucky town one steamy-hot summer, set in a honky-tonk truck stop saloon situated along the Southern interstate.

THE STAR SHINER: Memoir of a Celebrity Make-up Artist
          Evan Richardson
          Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-7096-9
          Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4766-0137-3
          http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7096-9 
          http://www.amazon.com/author/evanrichardson
          
          THE STAR SHINER poses the question: Can a young man from a small Kentucky town--fleeing a domineering mother and an abusive, alcoholic father—find recognition and happiness in New York City, working with the high-powered fashion and cosmetic industries and with some of the world’s most famous people--without losing his values and his soul?”
          	After a notable career in fashion illustration and modeling in Paris, Richardson becomes a makeup artist, working with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and photographers Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Francesco Scavullo. 
          	 This is the golden era of fashion and cosmetics when Vogue  editor-in-chief, Diana Vreeland, Charles Revson and Estée Lauder, the king and queen of cosmetics, and Avedon, Penn, and Scavullo, ruled the industries. The reader is taken into wild nights at Studio 54 and into New York’s downtown after-hours dungeons, seething with sex, violence, and drugs, where individuals are treated as sexual stepping stones.
          Then the party ended with the scourge of AIDS that took Richardson’s partner and turned Richardson’s life around with a spiritual awakening.
          	The story is ultimately a triumph over adversity in which a man struggles to find his spiritual path back to life through the ashes of a decade that best fits F. Scott Fitzgerald's description of the Twenties: “the most expensive orgy in history.”