Round Up the Unusual Suspects

Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery, #3

by

Elizabeth Crowens

Murder on the set!

Round Up the Unusual Suspects is the third novel in Elizabeth Crowens's delightfully nostalgic Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery series, and the author shuffles history and famous faces to entertain readers. Using actual locations and figures from Hollywood's past to populate the story, the fictional detectives rub shoulders with the Golden Era's elite to bring to life the murder of an undercover German-American agent on the Warner Brothers' soundstage during the filming of the iconically patriotic movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy. 

Babs Norman, the principal in B. Norman Investigations, and her partner, Guy Brandt, are summoned by the head of the studio, Jack Warner himself, to discreetly find the murderer, while maintaining radio silence with the press. Babs chafes under Warner's hands-on involvement in the case, as Guy is assigned the plum task of investigating on the studio grounds while she is relegated to researching the victim's background. Meanwhile, she is desperately worried about her roommate, Aoi Otake, as the government proceeds with plans to send all residents of Japanese heritage to internment camps. Guy, working undercover alongside another embedded spy on the set of an Errol Flynn/Ronald Reagan vehicle, Desperate Journey, walks a delicate journey of his own as romance blossoms. 

The plot moves quickly with its exciting mix of fiction and historical facts and figures. Readers get a look at the realities of President Roosevelt's Executive Order regarding Japanese-Americans, the simultaneous infiltration of Nazi sympathizers into potentially critical positions during wartime, anti-Semitism, and the impact of society's views on gays and lesbians. The look and feel of early 1940s Hollywood is uncanny, and the frequent cameos of the era's big names are a surprise and delight. 

I recommend ROUND UP THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS to readers of historical cozy mysteries, especially those who enjoy 1940s wartime films. 

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advance Review Copy from the author through Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours.