Valentino
Created by Loren Estleman

Private eye writer and film buff Loren Estleman latest series, originally exclusive to EQMM, is a string of short stories (and later, novels) relating the adventures and misadventures of film detective VALENTINO, who works an archivist for UCLA's Film Preservation Department. His job? Track down rare (and therefore valuable) films.

It's an amusing spin on the amateur sleuth, whose day job actually does involve quite a bit of detective work. There's even a wise-cracking battleship of a secretary at the university to give Valentino a certain amount of grief. And I love the idea of him living at the Oracle, an abandoned movie theatre he'd bought, rather than see it razed. Unfortunately, the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the whole thing is bogged down occasionally by too many intrusions of film trivia, although A-type film buffs will no doubt lap it up.

Estleman's considered by many to be one of the best contemporary private eye writers around, best known for his series about defiantly anachronistic Motor City gumshoe Amos Walker, and he's been nominated and won several Shamuses over the years. In fact, as of 1998, he's the most Shamus-nominated writer of them all. He's also responsible for the adventures of sleazeball P.I. Ralph Poteet, as well as a series that traces Detroit crime from the thirties to the present. And Estleman also writes westerns and has won the Western Writers of America's Spur Award a couple of times.

UNDER OATH

• “Break out the popcorn! Mystery fans and old-movie fanatics will love Frames. A delightful double feature of vintage Hollywood murder and hilarious present-day shenanigans. The snappy dialogue alone is worth the price of admission.”
  —Deborah Donnelly, author of The Wedding Planner Mysteries

SHORT STORIES

• "Dark Lady Down" (March 1998, EQMM)
• "The Frankenstein Footage" (July 1998, EQMM)
• "Director's Cut" (December 1998, EQMM)
• "The Man in the White Hat" (May 1999, EQMM)
• "Picture Palace" (July 2000, EQMM)
• "Greed" (May 2002, EQMM)
• "Bombshell" (August 2003, EQMM)
• "Shooting Big Ed" (May 2005, EQMM)
• "Garbo Writes" (February 2007, EQMM)
• "The Profane Angel" (September/October 2007, EQMM)

NOVELS

• Frames (2008) ...Buy this book

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.