cover image Murder in Tinseltown: A Hollywood Era Choose-Your-Own-Story Mystery

Murder in Tinseltown: A Hollywood Era Choose-Your-Own-Story Mystery

Max Nightingale. Pegasus Crime, $27.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-63936-957-7

Nightingale (a pseudonym for Jonathan Whitelaw, author of the Bingo Hall Detectives series) delivers an initially enticing but ultimately disappointing take on the Choose Your Own Adventure format. In 1958 Hollywood, 27-year-old ingenue Blanche Aikerman has been nominated for Best Actress at the upcoming Goldie Awards. She’s feuding with her entourage—including her overbearing mother, imperious director, and a greedy studio head—when the LAPD received a call from her suite at the Royal Premiere Hotel. Readers are cast as the detective who fields the muffled, distressed message, then heads to the hotel and finds Blanche dead. From there, Nightingale concludes each chapter with a choice between several narrative routes to solving Blanche’s murder, though some of them are dead ends. Unfortunately, the policing feels far-fetched, several sections contain glaring continuity errors, and the supporting cast is strictly two-dimensional. In addition, the actual variation between the narrative options is disappointingly slim. What begins as a promising interactive L.A. noir ends with a whimper. Agent: Matthew Cole, Northbank Talent Management. (Sept.)