THE SHARPEST NEEDLE

As Hitler’s troops mass at the Polish border during Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939, Paramount costume designer Edith Head and her amanuensis, Lillian Frost, are saddled with a much smaller mystery. At least it looks smaller.

Someone signing themselves Argus has been sending silent film star Marion Davies anonymous notes as cryptic as they are menacing. And not just Marion, best known these days as the mistress of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, but retired makeup artist Clarence Baird and his pinochle buddy, assistant director Rudi Vollmer. Having heard all about Edith and Lillian’s earlier sleuthing successes, Marion wants them to make Argus stop. In short order, the two women arrange to meet with Clarence and Rudi; Edith alertly identifies Clarence as Argus; and Clarence, presumably stricken by guilt, kills himself. Except his death isn’t really a suicide, as LAPD Detective Gene Morrow, Lillian’s former swain, indicates, and the notes from Argus don’t stop—they just switch from handwritten to typewritten. Clearly there’s more going on here, and Lillian suspects it’s connected to a spike in local interest in the work of Paolo Montsalvo, Mussolini’s favorite painter, and the reappearance of American-born Nazi Kaspar Biel, whose role as cultural attaché only hints at his involvement in deep-laid secrets. Among the many celebrity cameos—Orson Welles, Wally Westmore, Mitchell Leisen, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Paulette Goddard, Charlie Chaplin—the most notable is the absence of Marion’s cousin Herman Mankiewicz, who fed Welles much of the insider material for Citizen Kane.Maybe Patrick is saving him for the next installment.

The scattershot mystery is consistently upstaged by Hollywood gossip. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.