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| Final Rating: 2.8/5 |
The stars of 1925 Tinseltown shine in Silent Murders (A Roaring Twenties Mystery, Book 2), a cozy mystery set in Old Hollywood. The reader is reacquainted with the intrepid anti-heroine Leah Randall who has traded in her borrowed pearls and furs of a lost heiress for a clipboard, the modest earnings of civilian life as a script girl for the booming silent film industry and a new name to accompany her new straight-arrow life. Taking the moniker of Jessie Beckett, our narrator leads the reader behind the scenes of the alluring sets of silent film and rubs elbows with some of the biggest names of the era including Hollywood Royalty couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. But this new world is not all glitz and glamour as Jessie soon is pulled into Hollywood's sordid underbelly and the secrets of stars are slowly exposed that the eager papers are just waiting to embellish and throw over facts for juicy speculation. It is up to the reinvented Jessie Beckett to use her special sets of skills that she has perfected from years as a Vaudeville actress to somehow redirect the limelight of guilt onto the culprit of a series of murders and accidents that could easily destroy those she respects and admirers. So get ready for a look back at the sets and studios of Old Hollywood, gals feel free to grab your cloche hats, fellas your derbies and get your autograph books opened because Ms. Miley is sending her audience to the gilded gates and beyond in Silent Murders (A Roaring Twenties Mystery, #2).
In the end, I have to be honest I was disappointed as I finished. What charmed in The Impersonator seemed to be missing the mark in Silent Murders. I wasn't expecting anything particular with this sequel, at first I thought this was a completely different series and it can be read by itself if the reader has not read the prequel to this novel but the narrator lacked that believable spark this time. The pluck and moxie were still there but it seemed Silent Murders tended to outshine itself with the historical details and lost its narrator along the way. If the reader has an interest or desire to learn about the silent film industry you found the right book, this novel has a little of everything and even takes from facts and legends mixes them to create a few fictional crimes and characters that may remind you of something you may have heard before in passing. While The Impersonator charmed with its imaginative inspiration of Brat Farrar, Silent Murders takes too many cues from popular crime sitcoms and felt overused (especially at the end). Not only that but unfortunately Silent Murders used a few anachronistic terms in the narration and dialogue that completely pulled this reader from the experience and really disappointed me and the happenings didn't seem plausible which also pulled me from the story. Although what disappointed this reader may not faze others and if you have been looking for an amusing series about the entertainment niches of the 1920's you may really love A Roaring Twenties Mystery series, if anything you are bound to learn something historical with these cozy murder mysteries.
-read and purchased on kindle
Also in this series:
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The Impersonator (Roaring Twenties Mystery #1)by Mary Miley |
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