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Beyond the Beyond is Lee Goldberg’s 1997 standalone comic thriller, a satire of late-1990s Hollywood franchise television wrapped around a fan-convention murder plot. The fictional show Beyond the Beyond is a low-budget Trek-style space opera with a B-list cast, a writers’ room at war with itself, and a desperate producer. The cast is sent to a Las Vegas fan convention as a publicity stunt. Someone starts killing the show’s cast and crew. The TV-industry insider stuff is the whole point and the book’s biggest pleasure.
Goldberg’s background (he worked on Diagnosis Murder, Monk, SeaQuest DSV among others) shows on every page. The writers’ room politics are exactly observed, the actor-producer power negotiations are pitch-perfect, and the convention-floor satire is funnier than the genre usually rewards. The mystery plot is the weakest element: the suspect list is short, the motive telegraphed, and the killer’s reveal is more comedic than satisfying. But you do not read Beyond the Beyond for the puzzle; you read it for the insider TV-industry comedy.
Recommended for fans of Hollywood-insider satire (William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade for the nonfiction comparison, Janet Evanovich’s Metro Girl for the comic register) and for readers looking for books like Beyond the Beyond in the fan-convention-mystery niche. Three stars, with the writers’-room chapters earning the extra half.
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