The author of 100 books, Ray Bradbury has written but two mystery novels -- Death is a Lonely Business and A Graveyard for Lunatics, both set in 1950s Venice, CA. , and narrated by a young screenwriter. Now the screenwriter isn' t so green anymore, but mystery and murder still abound in the third of Bradbury' s noir tales. It was a dark and stormy night when Constance Rattigan, a once-beautiful screen star frantically knocks on the narrator' s bungalow door. In her clenched hands are two tattered phone books filled with names of long-dead Hollywood personalities. A few of those listed are still alive -- but each one of those entries has a red cross marked next to it. Who, Constance asks, could have sent these " Books of the Dead" to her- and why? Enlisting the aid of his trusted sidekick, detective Elmo Crumley, the pair sets out to unravel the mystery, taking readers on a tour of the waning days of Hollywood glamour, when stars and their pictures loomed larger than life itself.
