Valentino: Film Detective

A collection of stories featuring a UCLA film archivist who searches for lost footage—and finds trouble instead
Though he shares his name with the most famous heartthrob of the silent era, Valentino is not part of film history. Rather, he is a scholar of it, working at UCLA to help find and preserve rare films. But not all movies are lost because of careless storage. Some were hidden deliberately, and there are those who will kill to ensure they stay that way. In these short stories, Valentino’s searches for missing motion pictures become dangerous investigations, and he is forced to decide what’s more important—preserving film history, or preserving his own neck.
Comprised of timeless short stories that have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Loren D. Estleman’s Valentino: Film Detective shows why Estleman is considered a master not just of film history, but of the enduring art of murder, which golden-age Hollywood did so much to perfect.