Platinum Blues

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Lawyer and author William Deverell may be best known as the creator of
Street Legal, one of the most successful Canadian television dramas of
the 1980s.

Some contemporary stories deal with redemption, but this tale
chronicles the main protagonist’s efforts to salvage another
character’s salvation. Oliver Gulliver, a widowed lawyer from the
northern California town of Foolsgold, learns that daughter Elora’s
new fiancé is C.C. Gilley, a Vancouver-born alcoholic former rock star.
Gilley rehabilitates himself through musical composition, but when
Oriole Records steals his song for their loser artist Long Tom Slider,
Gulliver must champion C.C. in the courts.

Plagiarism is the theme of this ethically problematic novel.
Fortunately, no one can copyright clichés, even ones that appear
similar to items from Loose Talk, a collection of quotations from
Rolling Stone magazine. C.C. Gilley’s comment on LA—“if you are in
a limmie you can be Mickey Mouse”—resembles singer Ruth Copeland’s
observation (Loose Talk, p. 110). The old attorney dodges the smoking
guns, but may not outrun the clouds.

This faulty work is also gets “down ’n dirty.” A porn theatre’s
double bill offers “Nympho Terrorists” and “Come Like It Hot”;
the latter’s title refers to the Hollywood classic. One character
wonders if the first feature’s protagonists “specialize in blowing
people to death?”

Platinum Blues presents disreputable humour from an allegedly
picaresque writer.