The Humphrey Bogart Murder Case
Baxt has featured such celebrities as Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, and Marlene Dietrich in his series of Hollywood murder novels, so it's only appropriate that he finally got around to everybody's favorite tough guy, Humphrey Bogart. When his mother-in-law's house is ransacked and his housekeeper is murdered, Bogart gets involved in a dangerous search for a missing cornucopia filled with priceless gems; any resemblance to the plot ofThe Maltese Falconis purely intentional. Along the way, we meet such Bogart friends and coworkers as Dashiell Hammett, Sidney Greenstreet, and Mary Astor. Every celebrity turns out to be just what you'd expect: Bogart is a stand-up, stalwart good guy; Sam Goldwyn mangles his English; and Theda Bara, long past her movie career, is downright weird. Baxt fills his novel with nonstop anachronisms: no one collected comic books or baseball cards in 1940; food rationing didn't begin until after the U.S. entered World War II; T-shirts with slogans are a more recent plague. Still, despite the gaffes, the tale offers light entertainment for fans of movies or mysteries.George Needham