Originally published in Mystery Readers Journal, Volume 40, Number 1, Spring 2024

Crime will occur in any field that generates large amounts of money, as Peter King had his Gourmet Detective explain in one of his mysteries about the restaurant industry. Motion pictures have been moneymakers from their very start and according to the Gourmet Detective’s maxim, malfeasance is sure to follow.

A number of historical mystery series set during the Golden Age of Hollywood have cropped up in the past 30 years or so. These books are intriguing looks at a bygone time and the authors have researched their subjects thoroughly. What they can’t always capture is the zeitgeist of the period, the underlying traditions and unspoken values that drive behavior, which inevitably change over time.

To get a feel for the movie industry as it was seen by its contemporaries during its zenith, I searched for mysteries set in Hollywood published during the first half of the 20^th century. I found 14 mysteries published between 1929 and 1959. These books span 30 years, during which dramatic changes in technology, a major economic depression, and a world war made correspondingly significant alterations in social behavior and attitudes.

The books are summarized here in order of publication:

The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers (Grosset & Dunlap, 1929) takes place in Honolulu but its genesis was in Hollywood, so I counted it. The fourth of six mysteries about Honolulu police officer Charlie Chan, a Chinese-American whose skills are called into play when Shelah Fane, a Hollywood actress on the crest of her fame, is killed in the house she is renting near Waikiki Beach. Shelah had confided to one of dinner guests that she had been present during the murder of actor Dennis Mayo in Los Angeles three years previously, a case that the LA police had been unable to close. When Chan learns this, he assumes that her secret is the reason for her murder and that her killer was also responsible for the death of Mayo. This book is a competent police procedural of its time as well as giving insight into the late 1920s film industry. A surprisingly easy read despite its 354 pages, the writing flows smoothly with few dated references.

The Hollywood Murder Mystery by Herbert Crooker (Macaulay, 1930) seems to be the first mystery about East Coast private investigator Clay Brooke, who is in Hollywood to consult on a series of film scripts. He is promptly accepted into the frantic social whirl, where he meets a performer from the Follies named Berylyn Bovary. She has become involved with a wealthy older married man who uses his investment in various film ventures to add her to the cast whenever possible. When Berylyn is found dead in her dressing room, her jewelry case ransacked, the obvious conclusion is that she caught the thief at work. Until her jewelry was found elsewhere on the set. Brooke takes over the investigation at the behest of the District Attorney. In an interesting twist the local police are sidelined as Brooke and the DA work the case that involves jealous ex-suitors and worthless stock certificates. Brooke sounds like Holmes at times, talking about watermarked writing paper and the prints of rubber-soled shoes. A period mystery that reflects the last years of the Jazz Age.

The Four of Hearts by Ellery Queen (Stokes, 1938) is the second of Queen’s adventures on the West Coast, where he has been hired by Magna Pictures to work on a detective film. Among the stars under contract to Magna are the Royles, father and son, and the Stuarts, mother and daughter, who have been at war with each for years. Inexplicably John Royle and Blythe Stuart decide to marry and a quick ceremony is performed at an airport, after which the two fly off for a honeymoon. They never reach their destination; the plane is found later with both of the stars dead of poisoning and the pilot missing. No motive for the murders can be identified. This story is filled with Hollywood gossip columnists, a shady doctor, hardworking staff who support the flamboyant actors, a recluse living on a mountain, a slick casino owner, and plenty of industry detail. The actual mystery comes in a distant second but the resolution holds a couple of neatly constructed surprises.

The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Anthony Boucher (Simon and Schuster, 1940) is Boucher’s third mystery. Felix Weinberger, head of Metropolis Pictures in Hollywood, has decided to film the Holmes story The Speckled Band and has hired pulp writer Stephen Worth to write the script. Worth’s aversion to the works and the followers of Holmes is well known. His selection to commit the immortal detective to screen enraged the Baker Street Irregulars, dedicated fans of the Holmes canon, who promptly sent a barrage of protests to Weinberger. Weinberger can’t fire Worth, who has an airtight contract. To placate the Irregulars, Weinberger invites them to join him in Hollywood at his expense to serve as advisors to the film. On the day the Irregulars were to arrive, Worth appeared uninvited, causing no end of disruption, and he’s later found shot to death upstairs. The Irregulars jump at the opportunity to investigate a case using Holmesian methods. Boucher was an early member of the Baker Street Irregulars and clearly had great fun writing this book. In one fell swoop he drops names of his colleagues, Holmesian elements, and film studio background into a competently constructed mystery.

Say Yes to Murder by W. T. Ballard (Putnam, 1942) is the first novel about Bill Lennox, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking motion picture troubleshooter, who appeared in dozens of short stories and five novels. Lennox worked for the head of the prominent movie studio General-Consolidated Pictures. Lennox’s job involved keeping the Hollywood studio’s stars out of trouble and GC out of the headlines. It starts out with the granddaughter of a venerated movie queen finding a dead man under her bed. The man in question was a skirt-chasing actor under contract to GC, which makes it Lennox’s business. Then one of the actresses that the victim had been seen with recently turned up murdered. The writing is the terse, compact style of the pulps with focus on relentless action rather than character or motivation. The killer and the motive are carefully hidden, although Ballard planted a hint about two-thirds through the book.

Nobody Loves a Dead Man by Milton M. Raison (Murray & Gee, 1945) is the second novel with drama critic Tony Woolrich, who leaves New York for Hollywood, where he’s been hired as a technical adviser to a movie. He recommends changing the murder method in the film script and a day later, the leading man selected for the movie, James Melville, is found dead by the same technique. Melville was known for his uncontrollable drinking and womanizing and his ability to bring crowds to any movie he appeared in. Once the death was confirmed as murder and not suicide, Woolrich begins to believe that he was brought into the movie just to develop a credible murder method for the killer. Not appreciating being manipulated, he began his own investigation. The mystery here isn’t particularly well clued. Definitely readable though, mostly for the perceptive and in-depth insight into the Hollywood scene in the 1940s.

Dread Journey by Dorothy Hughes (Duell, Sloan & Pierce, 1945) in some ways is firmly set in its place and time, and in others it might have been ripped from last year’s headlines. Katherine Agnew, the film actress of the moment, is traveling cross-country via train from Los Angeles to her movie premiere in New York. Traveling with her is director Vivien Spender, one of the top names in Hollywood. A few years ago Spender scooped Agnew out of oblivion and made her into a household name. But now, as is Spender’s habit, he has found another beautiful face that intrigues him and Agnew is to be discarded. Only she doesn’t plan to go. Spender’s enormous ego does not allow anyone to cross him. Agnew has no intention of giving up her career. The battle of wills between the two creates nail-biting tension that infects the entire passenger car. Only 192 pages, this book packs a visceral punch in its ability to convey anxiety and fear. It easily holds its own with contemporary novels of psychological suspense.

The Birthday Murder by Lange Lewis (Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1945). In his fourth investigation, Lieutenant Richard Tuck of the Los Angeles Police Homicide Division is called to a house where Albert Hime, a recently married producer of second-rate movies, is suddenly and suspiciously dead. The only other person present was his new wife, successful novelist Victoria Jason. Her latest novel has been optioned for film and Hime was expecting to be named its producer. It would have been his first major assignment. Jason is the obvious suspect but her motivation was unclear. Actually no one had a good reason to kill Hime unless it was Victoria’s first husband, who has reappeared after an absence of several years. This book is considered Lewis’s best mystery; it is brilliantly plotted. The motive for the murder is pure Hollywood. Critics cite the strong characterization as among the book’s strengths.

The Devil’s Stronghold by Leslie Ford (Scribners, 1948). Widowed Grace Latham and retired Army Colonel John Primrose end up in Hollywood, well away from their usual Washington, D.C., haunts. Grace receives a panicked letter from an old friend who tells her that Bill, Grace’s oldest son, has fallen into the clutches of a scheming tramp and that she must rush to Hollywood to keep him from marrying her. Grace flies to California, where she finds that Bill and his Army buddy Sheep have taken on the role of agent and promoter for a hopeful young actress. A former star named Viola Kersey appears, anxious to take over the role of chaperone and mentor to the young hopeful, for no obvious reason. Soon after, a cord is tied across some stairs outside Kersey’s hotel room and someone else trips over it and falls to their death on the stone paving below. Motivations for most of the characters are obscure, and Grace becomes overwhelmed after the first murder and calls Colonel Primrose to join her. Primrose puts all of the pieces of a staggeringly convoluted plot together. Strictly from a mystery perspective, this may be the best of the lot. 

The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler (Hamish Hamilton, 1949) In the fifth book in Chandler’s series about private investigator Philip Marlowe, a young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, approaches Marlowe for help in locating her brother who came to southern California and recently stopped corresponding with his family. His search turns up the older sister, who had become an actress under a different name. Her involvement with a Midwestern gangster who relocated to Los Angeles to escape the police becomes the focal point of the story, as a photograph of the two showing them clearly in a location on a day that the gangster had told police he was somewhere else comes into Marlowe’s hands. Drugs, blackmail, and murder abound. Achingly beautiful writing belies the brutality of the action.

Black Gardenia by Elliott Paul (Random House, 1952) finds expatriate private investigator Homer Evans and his sidekick Finke Maguire in Hollywood. A trio of thugs from Chicago is trying to take over the E Pluribus Unum movie studio. The EPU CEO is trying to replace fading star Shirley Hall with a younger one. Shirley is not going quietly and the wealthy older businessman who intends to marry the starlet forbids her to act. The movie studio is frantically trying to make both of them change their minds. This book was hard to follow, scenes shift rapidly and the cast of characters is large and varied. Many of the passages are sight gags and would do better on screen than on a page. The motives and suspects surrounding the multiple murders seem endless. 

Cold Poison by Stuart Palmer (M.S. Mill Co. and W. Morrow, 1954) is the one of the last mysteries in the Hildegarde Withers and Inspector Oscar Piper series. Miss Withers has left her beloved New York and retired to southern California for medical reasons but she’s still up for an investigation when Piper refers the head of an animation studio to her. The employees responsible for the irrepressible Peter Penguin cartoons are receiving threatening anonymous letters and shortly afterwards they are poisoned. When Miss Withers telephones Piper to tell him about its escalation, Piper recognizes similarities in the first murder to a cold case in the New York files and flies out to see if he can make an arrest. By the third poisoning, the studio is shut down and all of the employees are thrown out of work. Before they scatter to new jobs, Miss Withers arranges a classic confrontation scene. It’s the New York owner of the studio though who provides the final conclusive bit of information she needs to clinch the killer. The motive is right out of an early Agatha Christie.

The Crime, the Place and the Girl by Dorothy and Douglas Stapleton (Arcadia House, 1955) is a stand-alone mystery, which is unfortunate because it has series potential. Peter Hack is officially the publicist for Loeb Films but he serves as unofficial troubleshooter and dogsbody for Jacob Tobias, the studio president. At the splashy premiere for the latest Loeb offering, the crowds go wild, trying to reach the stars on the red carpet. One girl in particular was striking, a desperate look on her face as she pushed past the security line. Tobias was enchanted by her expression as he viewed the video later and told Hack to find her so that he could cast her in a film. When he next sees her face, it’s in a photograph, one of dozens in a collection held by a dead blackmailer. She is sought by the police as a suspect in the murder of said blackmailer. Hack is one step ahead of them because he has learned her name. All he has to do is find her and keep her away from the police. This involves a great deal of alcohol and any number of bars and speakeasies, mostly in company with Tom Brady, Loeb’s Western star in full regalia including a white Stetson driving a large heavy roadster, which ends up in the front window of one of the bars. Great characters, even the minor ones are vividly drawn.

In Black Is the Fashion for Dying by Jonathan Wyatt Latimer (Random House, 1959) screenwriter Richard Blake is given a few hours to make a complete change to the ending of a picture being filmed the next day, since Caresse Garnet, movie star and diva, decided she didn’t like it. 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. How did blank cartridges get swapped for live ammunition? This is a solid puzzle story. Aside from the very good mechanics of the mystery, the Hollywood setting hums with authenticity. The details and vocabulary of the video recording process are fascinating.

I found a number of recurring themes in these 14 books:

• The earlier books often reference the transition from live vaudeville to recorded entertainment and from the silent movies to the talkies. Some vaudeville actors successfully continued their careers in the new medium but others didn’t. The later books address the threat of television to the movie industry. The dominance of the film industry faded as television took over.
• Studio executives made and broke actors, who had little control over their careers. Nearly all of these books show the studio CEO wielding tremendous power.
• Small studios walked a financial tightrope. They only undertook to produce one film at a time. Money was so scarce that the failure to complete a movie and release it to the public could be enough to sink a studio.
• Film technology was still quite limited. An actor who was suddenly no longer available partway through filming could not be worked around and the project had to be scrapped, the money invested in it lost. Actors were incredibly valuable during the shooting of a movie but expendable before and after.
• Career criminals saw the moneymaking potential of Hollywood early and flocked to the studios to get a piece of the action.
• True friendship was hard to find among Hollywood insiders. Relationships of all kinds were established on the career benefits the association would provide.  
• Studios employed troubleshooters to do nothing but keep the misbehavior of their stars under wraps. Men were allowed to act out until it affected their standing with the moviegoing public. Then they were reined in.
• On the other hand, women had no agency. Actresses had a definite shelf life and they were expected to go quietly when they were considered no longer useful. Nearly every one of these books demonstrate how disposable and powerless women were in the film industry. Those that fought the system were punished.

Not only are most of these books good mysteries, they illustrate the history of a segment of the U. S. entertainment industry in fascinating detail.