The Greta Garbo Murder Case
Baxt with yet another exhumation of the old Hollywood (The Talking Pictures Murder Case, 1990, etc.)--this time set in the first months of WW II, when the town is flooded with expatriate Germans like Erich Von Stroheim. He's directing a movie about Joan of Arc starring Greta Garbo, who's also playing a real-life detective in what seems to be a Nazi plot centered around the movie's backer. That's Albert Guiss, billed as the world's richest man and surrounded by a raft of toadies mingling with FBI agents (disguised as lackeys of one sort or another). Poisoned bodies drop like flies; Garbo acts like looney tunes; and the pointless, disjointed plot is unenhanced by tedious name-dropping and artificial dialogue. Strictly for fans of long-inferred gossip about long-inferred greats and their satellites. --Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.