The marble orchard
Black Mask Boys seriesbook 2 of 2
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Mystery fiction's legendary trio, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Erle Stanley Gardner, are back as amateur detectives, following their dynamic, critically acclaimed debut in The Black Mask Murders. Here they interact in a complex, colorful, and ultimately dangerous adventure, a richly textured thriller that also celebrates the joys of love and marriage between Chandler and his exceptional wife, Cissy.
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As narrated by Chandler, the adventure begins in East Los Angeles with the discovery of what is apparently the ritual suicide of Cissy's former husband in a Chinese cemetery. Action moves swiftly from the coastal splendors of the Hearst castle, to the abandoned canals of Venice by the Sea, to an ornate hotel on Coronado Island, to the rococo Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill.
The characters are equally diverse: a mysterious screen star known to millions as the Vampire Queen, a concert pianist who discovers surprising romance, an ex-stage actor with a penchant for using his fists, a missing sister who prefers to stay missing, and a pair of muscle-bound punks who don't balk at kidnapping and murder.
Along the way readers will encounter such fascinating real-life personalities as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, America's cinema sweetheart Shirley Temple, comic genius Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and a brash young Orson Welles.
Once again, William F. Nolan expertly evokes the surreal world of Southern California in the 1930s, when Hollywood provided golden dreams for a nation in economic crisis, as the all-time masters of crime fiction return in a bold, inventive new novel that will stun, shock, and delight.
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