Lone Star: An Edna Ferber Mystery

Ifkovic’s promising debut, the first in a series, features real-life writer Edna Ferber as an amateur sleuth in 1955 Hollywood. The Pulitzer Prize winner is visiting there because her bestselling novel, Giant , is being made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean. While she’s repelled at how show biz distorts the thinking of everyone involved in it, she becomes fascinated by young Dean—truculent, winsome, infuriating and brilliant. Though he’s the hottest actor in town, he’s still vulnerable to blackmail letters from an unstable actress, so he’s the prime suspect when she’s murdered. The septuagenarian Ferber, an equally shrewd but tarter version of Miss Marple, begins investigating with the help of Giant co-star Mercedes McCambridge, sorting through a city built on vanity and glamour. Ifkovic handles the mystery plot competently, but the main pleasure is looking beneath the surface of the movie business to see the stars as people, in particular the doomed Dean. (Apr.)