The Bette Davis Murder Case [Hardcover]

Readers may have to be fastened in their seats for this bumpy read as Baxt (The Marlene Dietrich Murder Case) resurrects another Hollywood celebrity for an encounter with murder. Between ferocious puffs on her cigarette, a tempestuous Bette is in London, playing an unaccustomed supporting role as she helps Agatha Christie, married here to archeologist Max Mallowan, solve a series of murders. Former nurse Agatha suspects that her neighbor Virgil Wynn, also an archeologist, is being slowly poisoned. Bette has been introduced to the Wynns by a spiritualist she met while sailing to London, where she's to act in a film while fighting studio chief Jack Warner and shedding her bandleader husband. Overplotted, undercharacterized and longer on movie lore than logic, this tale is a waste of its readers' brain cells.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward, and Talullah Bankhead are among the many stars who have appeared in earlier installments of Baxt's long-running celebrity mystery series, and now it's Bette Davis' turn. Set in England, where Davis is visiting, the story turns on the death of an archaeologist, who just happens to possess a greedy family. A talented medium plays a role in the proceedings, as does a nosy neighbor who just happens to be Agatha Christie. The mystery itself holds few surprises, but characterization is right on the money, and that's where the fun comes in. Baxt does a mean Bette Davis, and the rest of the gang has silver-screen quality as well. Fans of Christie's cozy mysteries are the logical audience for this meeting of sweet Agatha and tough Bette. Ilene Cooper

Still another movie star of Hollywood's Golden Age turns sleuth in the hands of Baxt (The Marlene Dietrich Murder Case, 1993, etc.). This time it's Bette Davis, who is fleeing to England in order to wait out a divorce and a lawsuit against her studio. On the boat going over, she meets Nydia Tilson, a medium with access to the British upper crust. Through Nydia, the actress is introduced to Virgil Wynn, a prominent Egyptologist, and to Agatha Mallowan, who under her previous married name, Christie, writes mysteries. Bette and Agatha soon have a real-life mystery on their hands, because Virgil is wasting away and no one can determine why. Is it the curse of the Pharaohs? Is it some rare disease picked up in Africa? Or is someone gradually finishing him off with arsenic? After Virgil expires, the actress and the writer are literally hip- deep in bodies as Virgil's mother, Nydia's husband, and the Wynn family maid are snuffed. Bette must somehow solve the multiple crimes while chain-smoking and drinking everything in sight. Atmosphere is provided by name-dropping (Constance Bennett, Daphne Du Maurier, No‰l Coward). The plot wears as thin as the silver-screen gimmick in this by-the-numbers mystery, deliberately reminiscent of a Christie novel. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1936 London, British mystery writer Agatha Christie teams up with Hollywood starlet Bette Davis to investigate a bitter feud between rival archaeologists that leads to a series of murders.