Make Believe

August 6, 2012
Set in 1951, Ifkovic’s enjoyable third Edna Ferber mystery (after 2011’s Escape Artist) deposits the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer in Hollywood just before the premiere of the movie Show Boat, based on the musical adapted from her 1926 novel of the same name. Edna has come to support musical arranger Max Jeffries, a friend who’s been blacklisted as a result of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts, and to meet Ava Gardner, who plays mulatto Julie LaVerne in the film and is involved with Frank Sinatra. Five days after Edna’s arrival, someone shoots Max dead while he’s alone in his bungalow. A prime suspect is an erratic Sinatra, who had a recent fight in a restaurant with Max witnessed by columnist Louella Parsons. A host of Hollywood and Broadway personalities from Hedda Hopper to George S. Kaufman provide period color as a sharp-witted Edna probes for the reason behind Max’s murder.

September 15, 2012
Back from a long-ago prequel in her hometown (Escape Artist, 2011, etc.), formidable author Edna Ferber returns to the 1950s and to her most unlikely avocation: amateur sleuthing. When her old friend Max Jeffries, a peerless music arranger whose labors have enriched every screen version of Show Boat, writes a letter in defense of the Hollywood Ten that gets him attacked and blacklisted, his credit removed from the 1951 Technicolor version MGM is about to release, Ferber packs up the galleys of Giant and rushes to his side in support. Five days later, Max, shot to death in his bungalow, is beyond the staunchest support. Or is he? Vowing, "No one murders my friends and gets away with it," Ferber makes the rounds of Max's few friends--especially his other two musketeers, aging actor Sol Remnick and Egyptian Theater manager Larry Calhoun, who've gone in with Max on several little investments--and his biggest enemies, Ethan and Tony Pannis, whose mobster brother Lenny's fatal fall from a balcony they blame on Max's wife, Alice, who'd been married to Lenny until he hit the ground. But all these suspects, whom dyspeptic narrator Ferber sketches in lightning strokes, are upstaged by the blistering double portrait of Ava Gardner, the star of the new Show Boat, and her bantamweight lover and sparring partner, Frank Sinatra. Though Ferber has no use for the classless crooner, desperate to revive his flagging career by getting cast in From Here to Eternity, she brings radiant, insecure siren Gardner to triumphant new life, just as she did with Harry Houdini last time out. As for the mystery, it's a little embarrassing watching the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ferber running around town checking alibis. Come for the whodunit, stay for the stargazing.

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October 1, 2012

Ifkovic's series jumps ahead to author Edna Ferber's Hollywood days, when her novel Showboat is being filmed and a blacklisted friend is killed. Mix in Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner for an unforgettable read. This is the third entry (after Escape Artist). [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/12.]

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