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As a secretary to Dex Theroux, a soused Private Investigator who spends the majority of his days in the company of his buddies "Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniel, Jim Beam, and Jose Cuervo," Kitty Pangborn considers herself lucky. It's 1931 in Los Angeles, and jobs are scarce–"I was happy enough to have a desk to show up at," she confides. "Even the occasional rubber paycheck couldn't put a damper on the fact that I had a job when so many did not." At the opening of DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE, Linda L. Richard's second novel featuring the plucky Miss Pangborn, things are looking up for Dex and Kitty. For one thing, Dex has laid off the boozing, and there's a steady stream of clients to keep the bills paid. But when Dex is retained by film star Laird Wyndham to prove the actor's innocence in the murder of a fading starlet, it becomes immediately clear to both the shamus and His Girl Friday that festering under Hollywood's glittering façade are bruised egos, conniving plots, and a scrabbling desire to get to the top no matter what the costs. "…the thing we were dealing with was so large," Kitty admits, "I was beginning to get the idea we couldn't see the whole thing in one glance, even if we had all the facts, which I was fairly certain we did not." While much of the novel is spent unveiling the glossy, decadent, and deceitful world of the Hollywood elite—with Kitty and Dex moonlighting at elegant masked balls and going undercover on elaborate film sets replete with exotically costumed extras and two-faced financiers—Richards' perceptive eye most often alights on the world just to the edges of her story. At its heart, DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE is less about the actual crime committed (one will be hard pressed to even remember the name of the victim by the story's resolution), than it is about the circumstances and society surrounding it. It's strictly a Have and Have Not world that the characters inhabit, with Kitty's empathetic and observant narration taking in both the bored excesses and indulgences of the upper echelons as well as the "Okies and their trucks loaded up with all their worldly goods clogging up the state lines and out-of-work men shuffling around outside locked construction sites every morning…." Despite a somewhat anticlimactic resolution and the occasional awkwardness of Richard's gumshoe slang, DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE uncovers a shadowy world of glamour and intrigue with just the right blend of excitement and misery to capture the paradoxes of Hollywood during the Depression era. Kitty and Dex are an endearing pair, their witty banter encapsulating the mutual trust and affection that underlies their sometimes unbalanced relationship. A satisfying installment in a promising series, DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE is an engaging novel that invites readers to consider circumstances more than facts, and complex motives more than simple resolutions. It will keep readers thinking about the "Why' long after they discover the 'How.'
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer, May 2009
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