Murder Offscreen - Hardcover

Osborne, Denise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805031138 ISBN 13: 9780805031133

Publisher: Henry Holt and Cmpany, 1994

Synopsis

Meet spirited Queenie Davilov in her first appearance on the mystery scene. A struggling screenwriter who moonlights doing security checks on the Hollywood film community, she's clever and wry, with an indefatigable sense of curiosity. She's a woman with a taste for Jack Daniels and her own hand-rolled cigarettes, who isn't superstitious but keeps a Goddess icon or two around the house, "just in case."
When Queenie attends the premiere of Lucifer's Shadow, a horror film she worked on as the script supervisor, she breathes a sigh of relief that filming is finally over. A suicide and the accidental deaths of two of the movie's crew plagued its production, setting nerves on edge and Hollywood's gossip columnists agog. Now, as the lights dim and the cinematic horrors unfold onscreen, the specter of death once again intrudes offscreen when producer/director Burke Lymon is spectacularly murdered, in a manner worthy of his own creation.
As Hollywood reels in an atmosphere of terror and suspicion, Queenie is hired to find the demonic killer. Who wanted Lymon dead, anyway - and why? Rumor had it his production company was failing, but was that reason enough for murder? Or did an obsessed and greedy insider plan the crime to make the movie's popularity "go ballistic"? And what about skeletons in the secretive director's murky past? Queenie must use all her wits to save the next intended victim - before he or she falls within Lucifer's shadow.

About this title

Reviews

A lively, hip investigator debuts in this movie-industry mystery. Former PI Queenie Davilov hopes to make it as a Hollywood scriptwriter but for the moment makes ends meet by working as script supervisor and occasional sleuth for horror-film producer, Burke Lymon. At the premiere of Lymon's newest film, Lucifer's Shadow , the producer is found in the men's room hacked to death with a ceremonial axe, one of several he'd given company members for meritorious work. His widow immediately begins taking over the company, but the producer's secretary dips into the company's substantial emergency fund to hire Queenie to find the killer. The detective encounters a few difficulties, including a mystery in the victim's past and the disinclination of her former lover, LAPD Lieutenant J. P. Fitzgerald, to include an outside investigator in his case. Several company members come in as suspects until Queenie, who rolls her own cigarettes, penetrates an alibi and establishes motives that will lead her to the solution. Screenwriter Osborne gives her milieu and her cast a bright and highly charged reality.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Given the "mythic" locale of this crisply paced mystery debut, a different sort of credibility applies. Exaggerated, picturesque characters, wide-screen backdrops, and lurid subject matter all seem quite believable for Hollywood. The gory murder of notorious filmmaker Burke Lymon during the exclusive premiere of his latest, tragedy-ridden horror film fires up his excitable script supervisor Queenie Davilov, a tobacco-chewing aspiring screenwriter and sometime private investigator. A bit larger than life, then, but gripping.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Make room for Queenie Davilov, the new kid on the block among female detectives. Free-spirited Queenie is lively, smart, funny, and one tough cookie. She works as a freelance detective and part-time script supervisor, but her fondest dream is to be a Hollywood screenwriter, and she's even convinced a hotshot agent to look at one of her scripts. Meanwhile, though, Queenie's employer, producer-director Burke Lymon, has finally finished a horror film that's been plagued by one production problem after another. Then the premiere turns disastrous when Lymon is found hacked to death with the ax that was the film's main prop. Of course, Queenie is the logical person to find out who killed Lymon, and of course, she does, but only after more than 300 pages of pumped-up, fast-paced, pell-mell action filled with bizarre plots twists, charmingly eccentric characters, oodles of Hollywood glamour, and wacky, wisecracking wit. High marks to this new author and her feisty heroine. Emily Melton

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Cmpany
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805031138
• ISBN 13: 9780805031133
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310