Any Resemblance to Actual Persons: A Novel

Kevin Allardice’s unique and comic work, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, features pathological obsession, sibling rivalry, self-destructive tendencies and lasting childhood issues. This is standard fare for many novels – if this were a novel, rather than a novel-length letter to the New Wye Press True Crime Division.

Paul, a struggling novelist and writing instructor, has set out to refute the “true crime” status of his sister’s not-yet-published expose revealing their father to be the culprit behind the notorious Black Dahlia murder.

Allardice does a great job of getting the reader right alongside the tragicomic character of Paul. Writers (especially the struggling kind) and their hapless partners will relate to Paul’s brand of obsessive neurosis and will understand exactly what Paul’s girlfriend means when she tells him, “Ohhh, you’re such an MFA.”

Black Dahlia buffs, on the other hand, may not be so impressed by Allardice’s big revelation towards the end of the book, which they may already know from Mary Pacios’ 1999 book on the subject. That said, this isn’t a mystery novel, and Paul isn’t solving anything – least of all the wreck his life has become in pursuit of the unsolvable.