cover image The Hollywood Murder Casebook

The Hollywood Murder Casebook

Michael Munn. St. Martin's Press, $15.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-312-01443-8

This superficial survey investigates 13 mysterious Hollywood deaths, some of them possible murders, others perhaps suicides. Munn is particularly interested in unsolved cases, like the fatal shooting of director William Desmond Taylor in 1922, the death of actor-writer-director-producer Thomas Ince in 1924, which, the author speculates, may have occurred aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht, and the simultaneous deaths of actor Gig Young and his bride Kim Schmidt in 1978. Also covered are infamous cases involving the gunning down of underworld figure Bugsy Siegel, Cheryl Crane's stabbing of her mother Lana Turner's lover, the Sharon Tate massacre and the knifing of Sal Mineo. Munn's (Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston) overview is macabre and so sketchy that some cases are dealt with in as few as five pages. Photos. (March)