Murder Offscreen
by By Osborne, Denise
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , General

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.