On the day after Rudolph Valentino's death, a showgirl's body is found in George S. Kaufman's hideaway, and Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott enter an unfamiliar world of murder and mayhem.

A mysterious phone call from the past leads a young director named Alfred Hitchcock into a series of kidnappings, chases, and murder

murder mystery

The advent of talking pictures causes chaos in Hollywood, and revenge is in the air as Alexander Roland of Diamond Films confronts tyrannical Marie Darling, a mother of fading screen stars.

Refusing to be relegated to the status of a Hollywood has-been when World War II interferes with her career, Garbo accepts a role in an independent production. Soon she is at the center of an international imbroglio, where actors are spies, spies are actors, and some actors are simply acting. and humor.

The opening act at a Hell's Kitchen den of iniquity, man-about-town Noel Coward helps a friend investigate the club's three owners

The year is 1936, and Mae West has all of Hollywood wrapped around her little a place many a man would kill to be. The legendary screen siren has, however, one critic - one with deadly fangs in place of a poison pen - who is knocking off Mae West impersonators along his way to the real thing. But if there's one thing Mae West knows, it's that no no-account vampire is going to upstage Tinseltown's most celebrated vamp. Brought back larger than life as only George Baxt can do it, Mae herself takes charge of the investigation in an adventure brimming with her doubles and her double entendres. This time she's hoping he won't have a gun in his pocket, and that he won't be glad to see her. Armed with glamour, gossip, and curves of every kind, Mae leaps headlong into a web of blackmail and corruption without so much as a trace of fear. Says "You don't know danger until you've faced the New York critics on an opening night." And when a Hallowe'en party at one of Hollywood's spookiest, seamiest clubs brings hunter and hunted together, it's no longer clear who is after whom. What is clear, however, is that once Mae West gets in on the act, no sucker is safe.

New Year's Eve, 1931: Marlene Dietrich, as the reigning queen of Hollywood, sees fit to throw a royal bash in order to show off her legendary legs - and her secret-recipe potato pancakes. Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Jean Harlow are only a few of the luminaries who grace Marlene's star-studded guest list, and an astrologer's warning of danger serves only to heighten the Blue Angel's spirits. The only danger Marlene foresees avoiding is Groucho Marx after a bit too much revelry. The danger, however, centers upon the astrologer herself, who upstages her hostess with a dire prediction about a new world war - and is subsequently murdered. But while death may be a show-stopper in some houses, it makes Marlene a detective for the prosecution. Marlene is convinced that the culprit lies among the astrologer's clientele of show-biz greats and political heavies, and with Dietrich determination, the screen siren takes on Hollywood gossips, European power brokers, and Nazi sympathizers in order to find a star-crossed killer. In the barbed and wickedly witty style for which he is known, George Baxt has brought Marlene Dietrich to life in all her riveting charm, lively humor, and hausfraulich love of cooking.

"My specialite. A body in the library." So exclaims Agatha Mallowan, better known as Agatha Christie, to her neighbor Bette Davis at the discovery of the corpse of famous archaeologist (and notorious egoist) Virgil Wynn. Bette has rented Virgil's museum-like mansion in London for a few months of relaxation while her Hollywood lawyers renegotiate her contract, but instead of peace and quiet, she gets embroiled in murder. Bette stumbles headlong into the bitter - and now deadly - Wynn family feud, complete with a cast of characters only George Baxt could create. Mabel, the domineering mother, still interferes although she's been dead for years, as her husband, Sir Roland, knows only too Perhaps he has taken Virgil's success as an archaeologist and as Mabel's favorite too personally. Virgil's siblings, Anthea, an unbalanced spinster who writes truly blank verse, and Oscar, who has dedicated himself to cacophonous musical compositions that will never see publication, have begrudged Virgil everything from his lion's share of their mother's attention to his wealth, which was their sole support. Where are Bette and Agatha to turn for the solution to a mystery already too close to home? Toss into the mix an overly devoted maid, a beguiling medium whose seances are to die for, a curse from the tomb of an Egyptian queen, a flirtatious police inspector, and a pinel of arsenic - not to mention a host of dead bodies both new and mummified. Only the grand dame of mystery and the sultry starlet of the silver screen could solve the case!

All clues indicate that someone is looking for a priceless cornucopia filled with jewels dating from the time of Marco Polo that was once in the possession of Mayo's sea captain father. Similarities to The Maltese Falcon draw Dashiell Hammett and his acerbic lady Lillian Hellman into the chase, and for a while it seems that everyone, from the washed-up silent film actress Karen Barrett to the greatest screen vamp of the twenties, Theda Bara, to studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn, has had his or her hands on the cornucopia. But then a murder is discovered, and another, and a third. Who wants the prize badly enough to kill for it? A bossy Italian contessa or her disgruntled lover? The proprietor of an antique shop or his bewigged "daughter" Nell? The assistant to Hollywood's trendiest interior designer? Samuel Goldwyn?? Once again Detective Herb Villon, his girlfriend, gossip columnist Hazel Dickson, and his assistant Jim Mallory star alongside the real celebrities in a glamorous story of murder, mayhem, and "such stuff as dreams are made on."

Basking in the recent success of The Thin Man, William Powell and Myrna Loy stumble onto a situation so typically Hollywood that only the real-life incarnation of Nick and Nora Charles could take the case. A Hollywood madam publicizes that she's in need of money, effectively putting the squeeze on many of Hollywood's leading men by implying that soon she might be desperate enough to sell the contents of her "little black book." A book like that could do a lot of damage in a town where Louis B. Mayer is not above exercising the morals clauses in his actors' contracts to suit his own schemes, where gossip spreads faster than you can say Louella Parsons, and where celebrity secrets are a valuable commodity - or a motive for murder. William Powell and Myrna Loy, the silver screen's most charming sleuthing couple, bring their roles as Nick and Nora Charles back to life alongside George Baxt's fictional investigating trio of Herb Villon, Hazel Dickson, and Jim Mallory. Once again, Baxt delivers a witty, engaging mystery depicting Hollywood in its heyday as only he can.

It's 1953, and Hollywood's most legendary dancing duo is reunited after five years of semiretirement to dance with Russia's celebrated Baronovitch Ballet. With all the talk about Communists and conspiracies, it's all Fred and Ginger can do to concentrate on the showuntil there's a murder.

While 1939 Atlanta is gearing up for the premiere of Gone With the Wind, Hollywood is experiencing a series of kidnappings targeted at star babies, with the dashing Clark Gable and his glamorous wife Carole Lombard on the case.