Yes, it's the son of the actor . . . and so I fully expected this curio to be pretty ghastly. My expectations seemed confirmed by the fact that it bore a laudatory cover quote from Connie Chung; all this proves that Bogart is pals with Connie Chung. Still, you know the principle: You bought it, so you better read it, buster.

And in fact it's quite good . . . although I found some aspects of it a bit disquieting.

As the front-flap blurb explains, our hero, R.J. Brooks, is "the only son of a legendary [now dead:] movie tough guy and his most glamorous leading lady"; compare and contrast with the back-flap bio, which tells us that the author is the "son of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall". To get away from his ghastly mother, Brooks has set himself up as a seedy P.I. handling "matrimonial cases"; but his life changes when his mother is discovered murdered in the midst of a sex act with her latest studly toyboy. Do you think there are maybe some issues here?

That aside, the tale rattles along fairly nattily, and there's a sufficient quota of snappy noir-style one-liners. Had Bogart published the book under a pseudonym, this wouldn't have been a concern: I might have wondered if the reference were to HB and Bacall, but it wouldn't much have bothered me. Who knows? Perhaps this was Bogart Jr's original intent but his agent/publisher persuaded him otherwise? I dunno.
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