Twentieth Century. Directed by Howard Hawks, starring John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Etienne Girardot, Ralph Forbes, Charles Levison, Edgar Kennedy. Columbia, 1934.
Not quite my brand of popcorn: Like Lombard and Robert Montgomery’s warring married couple in Alfred Hitchcock’s atypical (for him) Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the animosity is a little too much like life at its most distressing for me to consider this one an escape. But it’s a rare opportunity to appreciate Barrymore’s comic timing. Offscreen, his wit was scathing, but we seldom get to appreciate it on film, which makes this a special treasure; and Lombard’s energetic sparring makes her an even match. Hawks gives free rein to the comedy relief he employed to draw some of the intensity from such adventure/suspense classics as Rio Bravo and Scarface (the good version), veteran screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (The Front Page, et al) deliver a script cut with a scalpel, and the Golden Age’s deep bench of gifted character actors (Karns never fails to satisfy) round this one out just fine.
Valley of the Dolls. Directed by Mark Robson, starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward, Paul Burke. TCF, 1967.
This one’s a whipping boy for everyone who hates big-screen soap opera, but it ages better than some more recent fare revered by critics (The Royal Tenenbaums, anyone?). The acting is far better than advertised—such a cast could never be mediocre, no matter how they felt about a paycheck project—and Sharon Tate stands out as a starlet dying of cancer. (Susan Hayward, as the aging diva, delivers a tour-de-force farewell to a stellar career.) The harrowing nature of Tate’s murder in the Manson Family bloodbath is compounded by the fact that The Fearless Vampire Killers is the film she’s most remembered for; Roman Polanski, its director and the doomed star’s husband, was capable of helming a classic (Chinatown), but was more often responsible for trash like Vampire Killers—and for his near-Mansonesque behavior in private life. The jury’s still out on whether Tate would be remembered for anything but the grotesque nature of her death. She never got the chance.
Let’s raise a glass of sparkling champagne to the great blondes of Hollywood: the sacred and the profane, the damned and the deified, the fragile and the unassailable, with Harlow’s line from Red-Headed Woman: “Blondes have more fun, do they? Yes, they do!”
Books by Loren D. Estleman
AMOS WALKER MYSTERIES
Motor City Blue
Angel Eyes
The Midnight Man
The Glass Highway
Sugartown
Every Brilliant Eye
Lady Yesterday
Downriver
Silent Thunder
Sweet Women Lie
Never Street
The Witchfinder
The Hours of the Virgin
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
Sinister Heights
Poison Blonde*
Retro*
Nicotine Kiss*
American Detective*
The Left-Handed Dollar*
Infernal Angels*
Burning Midnight*
Don’t Look for Me*
You Know Who Killed Me*
The Sundown Speech*
VALENTINO, FILM DETECTIVE
Frames*
Alone*
Alive!*
Shoot*
DETROIT CRIME
Whiskey River
Motown
King of the Corner
Stress
Jitterbug*
Thunder City*
PETER MACKLIN
Kill Zone
Roses Are Dead
Any Man’s Death
Something Borrowed, Something Black*
Little Black Dress*
OTHER FICTION
The Oklahoma Punk
Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes
Peeper
Gas City*
Journey of the Dead*
The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association*
Roy & Lillie: A Love Story*
The Confessions of Al Capone*
PAGE MURDOCK SERIES
The High Rocks*
Stamping Ground*
Murdock’s Law*
The Stranglers
City of Widows*
White Desert*
Port Hazard*
The Book of Murdock*
Cape Hell*
WESTERNS
The Hider
Aces & Eights*
The Wolfer
Mister St. John
This Old Bill
Gun Man
Bloody Season
Sudden Country
Billy Gashade*
The Master Executioner*
The Undertaker’s Wife*
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion*
The Branch and the Scaffold*
Ragtime Cowboys*
The Long High Noon*
NONFICTION
The Wister Trace
Writing the Popular Novel
*Published by Tom Doherty Associates
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN has written four previous Valentino mysteries and more than seventy books all told. Winner of four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards, he lives in central Michigan with his wife, Deborah Morgan. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
I: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
II: The Girl Can’t Help It
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
III: The Fearless Vampire Killers
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Closing Credits
Books by Loren D. Estleman
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BRAZEN
Copyright © 2016 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved.
Jacket art by Shutterstock: Violanda (model), Janaka Dharmasena (film), Sheff (street scene)
Jacket design by Daniel Cullen
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Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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ISBN 978-0-7653-8046-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-7418-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466874183
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First Edition: December 2016