Jonathan Wyatt Latimer (1906–1983) was an American crime fiction writer known for his novels and screenplays. Before becoming an author, Latimer was a journalist in Chicago. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy. After the war, he moved to California and worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, including more than a dozen films and 32 episodes of the Perry Mason television series.
In the mid-1930s, he began writing fiction, starting with a series of novels featuring private eye William Crane. Black Is the Fashion for Dying (Random House, 1959) is Latimer’s last mystery, based on the author’s experiences as a contract screenwriter in Hollywood. The novel was published in England by Methuen as The Mink Lined Coffin in 1960; this was Latimer’s preferred title for the book.
Screenwriter Richard Blake is given a few hours to make a complete change to the ending of the script for a picture being filmed the next day, since Caresse Garnet, well-known movie star and absolute termagant, decided she didn’t like it.
The filming crew and cast is a contentious group until the cameras roll and then everyone is absolutely professional. The director hates the producer, the producer despises everyone, and most of the actors don’t get along with at least one other person on site. Nearly everyone on the set loathes Caresse.
In the key scene Caresse is shot by a Webley firearm. The pistol was loaded with blanks in full view of several people. The gun hung in a holster in view of the cast, the director, and camera men. Yet when the gun was fired, Caresse was killed. That she was murdered surprised no one. The question is how did blank cartridges get swapped for live ammunition?
This is a solid puzzle story. I began to suspect the motive about midway but could not figure out how the murder was committed. Aside from the very good mechanics of the mystery, the Hollywood setting hums with authenticity. The backstabbing, the jockeying for position and publicity, the movie hierarchy with the studio CEO trampling over everyone around him, and the box office favorites virtually untouchable. The details and vocabulary of the video recording process are fascinating.
Kirkus had this to say about the book in October 1959: “Writer Richard Blake, director Josh Gordon, producer Karl Fabro, and long-time star Caresse are involved in the reworking of a picture script with Caresse who, in her treatment of these, and assorted others, asks to be killed. Which she is and it is through Josh Gordon’s unremitting needling that her death and another’s do not go without punishment. The Hollywood scene in slick, sharp scrimmaging.”