Loren D. Estleman
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Product Description Enter Valentino, a mild-mannered UCLA film archivist. In the surreal world of Hollywood filmdom truth is often stranger than cellu
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loid fiction. When Valentino buys a decrepit movie palace and uncovers a skeleton in the secret Prohibition basement, he's not really surprised. But he's staggered by a second discovery: long-lost, priceless, reels of film: Erich von Stroheim's infamous Greed. The LAPD wants to take the reels as evidence, jeopardizing the precious old film. If Valentino wants to save his find, he has only one choice: solve the murder within 72 hours with the help of his mentor, the noted film scholar Broadhead, and Fanta, a feisty if slightly flaky young law student. Between a budding romance with a beautiful forensics investigator and visions of Von Stroheim's ghost, Valentino's madcap race to save the flick is as fast and frenetic as a classic screwball comedy. A quirky cast of characters, smart dialogue and a touch of romance make this Estleman's most engaging and accessible novel to date. About the Author LOREN D. ESTLEMAN has written more than sixty novels, including the recent American Detective, The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion, and Nicotine Kiss. His work has earned him four Shamus Awards, five Golden Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards. He lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1CHAPTER YOU COULDN’T LIVE a linear life in Hollywood. Everything was a special effect. One moment there you were on your eet of telephones, bellowing at brokers and bank managers, a gravel-voiced captain of industry in a screwball comedy, and then your vision swam and someone made broad circling motions on a harp, and the next moment you were lying on a stingy mattress in a rancid hotel room with a revolver in your hand. “Tragic case,“ the realtor said. “Are you familiar with the details?” Valentino nodded and took a hit from his five-dollar cup of coffee. He and the woman were standing in front of a bas-relief in bronze of Max Fink’s bald sad face on a plaque in the crumbling lobby of The Oracle, a ruin left over from the lost ancient civilization of Hollywood. The floor was littered with horse hair plaster and shattered chestnut shells, the plunder of some squirrel cineaste. “Tragic, and not uncommon. He wasn’t the only entrepreneur of his time to get caught in the pinch between the Wall Street crash and the talking-pictures revolution.” He smiled apologetically at the realtor, Anita Somebody. “I’m a bore on this subject. Ask me how to spell DeMille and I’ll recite his complete filmography.” She hesitated just long enough to convince him she didn’t know DeMille from Deliverance. She was a carefully preserved blonde in her forties, and Valentino knew her story without asking: She’d come out from Omaha or someplace like that twenty years ago, hoping for a role on L.A. Law, and when that missed the mark and she couldn’t get work in commercials, it was either realty or prostitution. Prostitution didn’t come with a dental plan. She looked obscenely well pressed in her agency blazer and tailored skirt among the rat droppings. “It’s what you call a fixer-upper,“ she said. “It’s what I call Ground Zero.” The grand foyer was a jungle of exposed wires and broken fretwork. An ambitious spider had erected a web of Babylonian proportions across the marble staircase and pigeons fluttered to and fro among the copper coffers in the ceiling. How the building had managed to escape demolition in a city of soaring property values and cheap Mexican labor was one for Charlie Chan. Valentino, who knew less about construction and repair than Anita knew about Cecil B. DeMille, said, “Explain to me again why you brought me here. I’m looking for a place to live, not a lifelong hobby.” “The bud get you gave us presented challenges. This neighborhood’s zoned commercial and residential. No one seems to know just where the break is. Developers are relucta
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