Vamp
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Vamp is a hot new Valentino mystery by Loren D. Estleman, the master of the hard-boiled detective novel and recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award.
Renowned film detective Valentino is on a quest to help restore The Comet, an extinct drive-in movie theater, and his trail leads him to Leo Kalishnikov, who requests a favor first—rid him of a blackmailer from his shady past, and he'll gladly hand over the money that The Comet needs.
With only an uncashed check for a clue, Valentino embarks on a treacherous path to save not only The Comet but the last remaining print of the 1917 film Cleopatra, which has been lost for over a century. The film is somewhere in Los Angeles, and Valentino is willing to risk it all to find it. He must navigate the shady underbelly of Hollywood once more, in a dangerous adventure that threatens not only his career—but his life.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Estleman artfully folds Hollywood history into a crackerjack whodunit in the seventh outing for film-loving L.A. detective Valentino (after 2020's Indigo). Valentino, who's spent years restoring a classic Hollywood movie house, is asked by his high school classmate, Dinky Schwartz, for help reviving a moribund drive-in theater. Valentino seeks assistance from another friend, theater designer Leo Kalishnikov, who agrees to provide some of the necessary funding on the condition that Valentino identify his blackmailer. Years earlier, Leo became a murder suspect in a crime of passion with dark sexual undertones—it was a case of mistaken identity, and another man was convicted, but Leo fled questioning, and now someone has dug up reports of the incident and faxed them to Leo, threatening his reputation. Valentino's dance card gets even fuller when retired cop Jasper Grote claims to have access to reels of the legendary missing 1917 film Cleopatra, left behind by his grandfather, who held onto the reels after failing to deliver them to their proper storage space during a devastating tornado nearly 100 years ago. While chasing down the reels, Valentino finds a corpse in his car and sets out to discover if there's a connection to Leo's blackmailer. Estleman's encyclopedic knowledge of the movie industry and gift for dialogue shine throughout. This gets two thumbs up. Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency, Inc.
