Renting Silence
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
In 1920s Hollywood, Mary Pickford’s script girl is out to solve a murder with “a little sparkle [and] some wily Prohibition-era shenanigans . . . a great read” (Booklist).
Former vaudevillian Jessie Beckett has found work as a script girl—with a sideline in sleuthing—at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, run by the silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. When actress Ruby Glynn is wrongly convicted of murder, Pickford asks Jessie to help clear her friend’s name. But it won’t be easy. The victim was found stabbed in her bedroom with Ruby lying unconscious on the floor, holding a bloody knife.
Jessie’s investigation sends her back through the Midwest vaudeville circuit, where she encounters old friends, new dangers, and her sometime-beau David seemingly involved in some shady dealings. Now it’ll take all her wits and ingenuity to find the killer without accidentally playing her own death scene.
“With a well-developed and surprising plot twist, an appealing, resourceful amateur detective, and fascinating period details, this entertaining historical will delight fans of Old Hollywood.” —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Miley's highly entertaining third mystery set during the 1920s (after 2014's Silent Murder), Hollywood "script girl" Jessie Beckett draws on her education in the school of hard knocks as well as her years in vaudeville to track down the killer of a young woman with a taste for blackmail. Jessie's bosses, movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Pickford, encourage her investigation after Ruby Glynn, a friend of Miss Pickford's, is falsely convicted of the crime. Jessie's quest takes her on trains across a fair amount of the country. Since Prohibition is in force, transporting and stealing booze is big business and highly dangerous. Meanwhile, Jessie's sometime lover, once known as the bootleg king of Portland, Ore., claims he's gone legit, but Jessie isn't sure. The reader gets a strong sense of what life was like if you were from an outsider group or broke Hollywood's moral code in public. A middle-of-the-night encounter with the Ku Klux Klan is particularly chilling. All the details of her journey not only advance the story but are fascinating in themselves.
