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Terrance comes alive in a way the guides do not, particularly when he muses on the Black actor Dorothy Dandridge’s relationship with married director Otto Preminger: “God, the things they had whispered … and that was Hollywood just a couple of years ago.” His bitterness over his relegation to belittling roles both on and off screen sets Terrance apart from the other survivors.Īnd yes, there’s a lioness among them, a woman whose power and determination lifts her above her comrades. It must have been even more of a challenge to build Terrance Dutton as a character without succumbing to cliché, especially since Terrance stands in for so many Black actors of the time - a man brought in to add what 1960s filmmakers saw as exoticism, but never allowed to film a love scene with a white woman. And he is smart enough to avoid cringeworthy dialect. One guide who survives, Benjamin Kikwete, and his older mentor, Muema Kambona, sound at times like Hollywood versions of themselves, using tired terms like “bwana” and saying improbable things about the landscape such as, “This could never grow tiresome.” On the other hand, Bohjalian also makes astute observations about these men whose livelihood depends on rich Western tourists. Where this wears most thin is in the portrayal of African characters. The former ‘Big Bang Theory’ actress is a first-time producer on the HBO Max comedy-thriller with hairpin tonal shifts. For all its open sky, “The Lioness” better resembles an Agatha Christie locked-manor-house mystery, with bodies falling like clockwork, than a gripping survivalist yarn.Īwards How Kaley Cuoco got ‘The Flight Attendant’ off the ground to play the heavy-drinking lead Yes, more deaths will come, some of them quite surprising and gut-wrenching. Most of the African guides are immediately killed, leaving one group speeding off to safety and another behind.
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On a morning when the tourists and guides have filled two jeeps for an expedition, gunfire erupts.
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Bohjalian is at heart a thriller writer, eager to upend charming scenes of wildlife-spotting with a deadly twist. These old-school glampers plan “to photograph elephants, not shoot them,” while preserving all the creature comforts: canvas bathtubs filled nightly by their guides, a “kerosene-powered ice maker” (because “you had to have a proper gin and tonic at the end of a long day on safari”) and proper beds set up in their tents.īest-laid plans. She’s beautiful and 30, and she has the means to bring along a robust entourage on her Serengeti trek: psychotherapist brother Billy and his pregnant wife Margie best friend and fellow actor Carmen and her aspiring-agent husband Felix her agent, director, and Terrance Dutton, her favorite co-star, who happens to be Black. Katie Barstow has reached the pinnacle: Not only is she a sought-after screen actor, she’s just married the love of her life, David Hill, a man she’s known since childhood who now works as a Los Angeles art gallerist. And his new novel, “ The Lioness,” takes place in early 1960s East Africa during a Hollywood star’s honeymoon safari. “The Flight Attendant,” a contemporary thriller published in 2018, is now in its second season as an HBO Max series. His 2021 novel, “The Hour of the Witch,” about colonial Massachusetts, came out a year after “The Red Lotus,” about an American lost in contemporary Vietnam. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.Ĭhris Bohjalian, bestselling author of 22 novels, manages something rare these days: He combines prolific output with bona fide range and originality.