Roaring Twenties Mystery

Can 1920's script girl Jessie do Mary Pickford's bidding and uncover a real killer? When Jessie is asked by her idol, the famous actress Mary Pickford, if she can do some private investigating for her, Jessie reluctantly accepts. A girl was found stabbed in her bedroom with another woman lying unconscious on the floor next to her, a bloody knife in her hand. With no police investigation into the murder, it's up to Jessie to hone her amateur detective skills and prove the girls innocence before she hangs for murder. But as Jessie travels through the roaring twenties world of Hollywood and movies, surreptitiously interviewing fellow travelling performers, she struggles to find the connection she needs. And with her love interest David seemingly involved in seedy dealings, can she uncover the killer's identity before she too is endangered?

1920's script girl Jessie Beckett investigates the murder of a movie projectionist in this absorbing historical mystery. "Joe Petrovitch was gunned down on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early October, during the ninth reel of Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush. " Employed by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Jessie Beckett has a busy time as Script Girl for Pickford-Fairbanks studios. Yet she also has a reputation as a skilled amateur sleuth. So when a projectionist is shot dead and his grieving widow asks Jessie if she can find out who killed him, Jessie is determined to find the killer and his motive. But who was the mysterious man in the red coat who fired three shots at Joe Petrovitch? And how could he enter and leave a crowded theatre without being noticed? To find the answers, Jessie must delve into the dead man's past and uncover dark secrets from another continent and another era. As she is to discover, the past has a long reach...

Welcome to Broadway - and to an unthinkable crime! Former theatre starlet turned amateur sleuth Jessie Beckett gets mixed up in murder when an on-stage shooting turns all too real. New York, 1926. It's not like Jessie Beckett goes around looking for murders to solve, but the vaudeville star turned movie script girl has a natural talent for it. After a lifetime on stage, she's sensitive to details that other people miss. So when leading theater star Allen Crenshaw is shot live on stage during a performance of hit Broadway show Rules of Engagement - a horrified Jessie watching from the second row - she knows she has to act fast before Allen's co-star, the beautiful Norah Rose, goes down for murder. After all, it was Norah who fired the fateful bullet . . . even if the shooting was all part of the show. Jessie investigates those closest to Allen - the presence of her theater companion, the superstar Adele Astaire, opening doors wherever they go - and finds only enemies. With the suspects for the disliked actor so numerous, can she uncover the truth in time to save Norah - or will the killer silence her too? Packed with real-life stars of the stage and screen, this page-turning romp through the boards and backstreets of Broadway is a perfect pick for readers who enjoy Jazz Age mysteries with intrepid female sleuths.