THE SILVER BLONDE

A literary take on film noir during Hollywood’s golden age.

It’s 1946. While young men were off to war, 17-year-old Clara Berg landed a job as vault runner at major filmmaker Silver Pacific studios. After spending a year taking film reels to and from the locked, fireproof archive, Clara, who loves the film industry, has landed a promotion to apprentice editor. While tidying up after a plan to meet for drinks with her screenwriter and war veteran friend, Gil, falls through, she finds Barbara Bannon, controversial star of the current production, dead in the vault. The next day she learns that it was actually Barbara’s stand-in, Connie Milligan, who was killed. The police believe Bannon was the intended target, but Clara feels otherwise, especially as she begins to remember disturbing fragments from her own childhood in Nazi Germany. Ross’ novel brings working life on a movie set vividly to life. Clara’s investigations rely a bit too much on coincidence, and the final peril ends with a fizzle, but overall, the mystery keeps readers guessing. Side plots involve antisemitism in America and Germany, American isolationism, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and Leni Riefenstahl (a woman known as Hitler’s girlfriend and filmmaker who really did travel to California in 1938 in an unsuccessful attempt to sell her works to the American market). All named characters are White.

Captures a time as well as a place: intelligent and thought-provoking.