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  • Published: 30 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241505328
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

Close-Up




Deighton draws on his personal experience of the cut-throat Hollywood film industry in this dark and compelling thriller

Deighton's incendiary novel of the film industry uncovers a Hollywood Babylon for our time.

Marshall Stone, international superstar and charismatic member of Hollywood's elite. Abundantly blessed with charm, genius and wealth, the one gift he most desires - everlasting youth - seems within his grasp when an eminent writer begins the star's biography. But painful memories and suppressed scandals threaten to expose the fiction of his life.

Dazzled by flattery and numbed by threats, the biographer is caught up in the big-daddy world where books are properties, films are investments, ratings are rigged, and stars and directors are bought and sold like slaves at an auction.

The rituals, the wheeler-dealing politics, and back-stabbing tactics of the richest industry in the world have never been more effectively portrayed. And at the heart of this glittering machine, a brilliant star who will do almost anything to remain untarnished.

  • Published: 30 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241505328
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Len Deighton

Len Deighton is the author of over thirty bestsellers of carefully researched fiction and non-fiction. His history writing was encouraged by A. J. P. Taylor and his books are noted for the picture they provide of the German side of the fighting as well as that of the Allies. His books include Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain and Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II, both published by Pimlico.

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Praise for Close-Up

The film industry is in many ways the ideal subject for Mr Deighton's talents.

Times Literary Supplement

Immense skill ... a stylish and stimulating performance.

The Times

The richness, the sardonic humour, the wheeling and dealing world of the films with its parties, its highly coloured characters ... The power of the book is undoubted.

Evening Standard
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