Shoot

December 7, 2015
Estleman’s fun fourth Valentino mystery (after 2013’s Alive!) finds the UCLA film scholar on the trail of a lost western, Sixgun Sonata, starring the married actors Red Montana and Dixie Day. Southern California’s Red Montana and Dixie Day Museum is closing, and Valentino receives an invitation to a farewell gala at the museum—a perfect opportunity to meet with Montana and plead for the sole surviving copy of the legendary feature film, rumored to be in Montana’s possession. Montana actually screens a portion of Sixgun Sonata and agrees to let Valentino have it—but only if Valentino will track down and recover the suppressed porno film that Dixie made before she teamed with Montana and started her career as a squeaky-clean cowgirl. And where is Dixie now? At her home, dying of cancer. Film buffs will revel in Estleman’s countless references to Hollywood’s greats and not-so-greats. Others may feel overwhelmed by his encyclopedic knowledge. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

Starred review from December 15, 2015
Estleman combines his two greatest loves, sleuthing and Westerns, in film-preservation detective Valentino's fourth appearance. Long, long ago, retired Western star Red Montana paid off a blackmailer who threatened to circulate stills from a blue movie his wife and co-star, Dixie Day, made before the two were teamed for romance and profit amid the sagebrush. Now that Dixie's dying and the 60-year-old Red Montana and Dixie Day Museum is closing, all Red wants is to ride off into the evening mist. But someone's back with evidence that Dixie's first screen appearance--mild by today's standards but still fatal to the couple's homespun myth--is still in existence. Red wants Valentino (Alive!, 2013, etc.) to find the film and neutralize the threat. When Val protests that he's more comfortable nosing around in archives than confronting blackmailers, Red responds with a bit of his own blackmail. If Valentino obliges, Red will present him a copy of the couple's debut film, Sixgun Sonata, a property long presumed lost; if not, he'll burn the print and lose this piece of history for good. Daunted but game, Val sets out to question Red's associates and swiftly finds cooperation, treachery, and even a surprise or two. The detective work winds up unexpectedly quickly; the real climax involves the trading of multiple debts and favors involving the bachelor party of Val's old mentor, UCLA professor Kyle Broadhead; Val's restoration of The Oracle, the aging movie palace he's adopted; the immigration status of a cabinetmaker's son; and the settling of a generations-old score. Valentino's most relaxed and accomplished appearance to date, one whose tone of sunset valediction perfectly suits what sounds uncomfortably (say it ain't so!) like Estleman's farewell to the two genres he's been masterfully associated with for 30 years.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2016
Past episodes in this always-entertaining series have found film detective Valentino investigating mysteries entangled in juicy bits of movie history concerning Erich von Stroheim, Greta Garbo, and Bela Lugosi. This time it's the classic Hollywood western, as embodied by iconic stars Red Montana and Dixie Day (fictional and much darker versions of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans). Montana tells Valentino, a UCLA film archivist when he isn't playing movie sleuth, that he will give the school a pristine copy of a supposedly lost Montana-Day film if Valentino will, first, recover the blue movie that Dixie, now dying of cancer, made early in her career and, second, pay off the blackmailer. If Valentino refuses, Montana threatens to burn the invaluable lost western. It's blackmail on top of blackmail, and only Val's love of classic westerns drives him forward, though what he finds in these cowboy stars' closets is enough to put him off his oats. Readers with a soft spot in their hearts for vintage westerns will saddle up for this one with a twinkle in their eyes. Happy trails!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)