THE MARLENE DIETRICH MURDER CASE

Yet another of Baxt's fictional takes on the glamour queens of film history (The Greta Garbo Murder Case, etc.). This time it's Marlene Dietrich, whose celebrity-stuffed New Year's Eve party is interrupted by the poison murder of astrologer-seer Mai-Mai Chu. Dietrich and Mai-Mai's friend Anna May Wong lend their energies and insider clout to Police Inspector Herb Villon, as the case intensifies with the fatal stabbing of waiter Morton Duncan. Mai- Mai's secret astrological charts pinpoint a clutch of recent Hollywood visitors, all party guests—among others, Dong See, a renown violinist; munitions-king Ivartensha; Mussolini admirer Countess Dorothy di Frasso; Hitler confidante/onetime opera-star Brunhilde Messer—all of them engaged in a global conspiracy for power and influence. It takes a third murder to inspire the trap that ends it all, with Dietrich in at the kill. Baxt's predictable mix—a parade of well-researched bygone celebs and resurrected gossip; scads of nasty, banal chitchat, laced with painful puns—but this time with a plot that's livelier and more imaginative than the author's norm: his fans will love it.