January 1, 2020
In 1939 Los Angeles, motion-picture costume designer Edith Head has a surprise for her friend Lillian Frost, who narrates this series, now in its third installment. It seems somebody is making a movie based on a real-life crime, and the filmmakers intend to portray Lillian's LAPD detective boyfriend, Gene Morrow, in a very unflattering light. Are the filmmakers playing fast and loose with the facts, or does the cop have some secrets he'd prefer stayed hidden? The second Frost/Head mystery, Dangerous to Know (2017), was an improvement over the first, Design for Dying (2016), and this one ups the ante again. Head, the real-life costume designer who would go on to become a legend in the film industry, has become a rounded human being, fully fleshed out, and not a collection of character traits. Frost, a fictional character, is likewise more genuine. And the story, concerning a bank robbery and the death of Morrow's partner, is genuinely gripping. Well done.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
February 15, 2021
It's 1939, and Marion Davies, who famously retired from acting a couple of years earlier to care for her aging lover, William Randolph Hearst, is receiving letters from someone threatening to expose one of her most closely held secrets. Lillian Frost and her sleuthing partner, Hollywood costume designer Edith Head, race against time to unmask the letter writer. But there's a problem: Davies refuses to help them. The fourth Frost and Head novel features a solid mystery, but it's the imaginative blending of real and fictional history that really sells the book. Davies and Head, of course, were real people; Lillian Frost is entirely fictional. But--and this is one of the most satisfying elements of the series--it's very hard to tell the difference. Although this series had a bit of a rocky start, the emergence of Head as a fully fleshed character, along with ever-more-engaging, Hollywood-based stories, has made it something quite special.
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