INDIGO

A sixth case for UCLA preservationist/film detective Valentino involves him more closely than any of its predecessors in the preservation and exhibition of an actual film.

Not that the film in question, Bleak Street, a 1957 production at RKO, then in the twilight of its own existence, is a real-life film. But Estleman’s loving enthusiasm for films noirs, efficiently channeled through his hero, will have you cheering for its resurrection when mysterious hotelier and philanthropist Ignacio Bozal swaps his copy of Greed for the only surviving print of Bleak Street and donates it to UCLA and rooting for Valentino’s attempts to get the print screened, which UCLA PR rep Henry Anklemire conditions on his ability to generate buzz around a 63-year-old film. The obvious angle to work is the disappearance of Van Oliver, the film’s star, shortly after the production wrapped. But as Valentino observes, “when it came to cold cases, Van Oliver’s was forty below zero.” And other complications quickly spring up along the way. Valentino’s longtime adversary Teddie Goodman announces that her boss, Supernova founder Mark David Turkus, has acquired the copyright to Bleak Street, forbidding UCLA or anyone else from screening it. A closer look at the print Bozal turned over indicates that it isn’t even Bleak Street but five reels of junk footage. And Valentino’s attempt to interview Oliver’s co-star, Ivy Lane, comes to grief when she dies the night before in a twist that morphs into a virtually self-contained short story. But Valentino, though shaken by his glimpses of someone who could be Oliver’s double, persists to an ending that includes the premiere of Bleak Street at Valentino’s newly opened Oracle theater and nearly 20 pages of appended lists of real-life books and movies aimed at film buffs who can’t get enough.

An irresistible popcorn chaser despite its slender mystery.