A killer is reenacting the deaths of Hollywood's blond bombshells, and Valentino must stop him before it's too late in Loren D. Estleman's Brazen.

UCLA film archivist and sometime film detective Valentino doesn’t take friend and former actress Beata Limerick very seriously when she tells him that she quit acting because of the curse on blond actresses. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Thelma Todd, Sharon Tate… they all had more fun, but none of them made it out of the business alive, and according to Limerick, she wasn’t taking any chances. But when Valentino finds Beata’s body staged the way Monroe was found, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” playing on repeat; he knows Limerick's death was no accident.

Police detective Ray Padilla doesn’t quite suspect Valentino is the killer, but he can’t let him off that easy. After all, the film archivist seems to be involved in more than his share of intrigue and death, which makes him a prime suspect. But Valentino is also a walking encyclopedia of Hollywood knowledge. When another washed-up actress is killed, the crime scene a copy of Thelma Todd’s last moments, Padilla enlists Valentino’s help in catching a serial killer of doomed blondes before he can strike again.

Two Westerns in the Page Murdock series from Spur Award-Winning Author Loren D. Estleman!

White Desert

U.S. Marshal Page Murdock is a tough cynic—and the last man you’d want on your tail. Though Montana-based, Murdock pursues a vicious gang into a harsh northern Canadian winter. While trying to outwit and outmaneuver groups of aggressive foes, Murdock pushes his luck as he struggles to get his man—and to survive in the unfamiliar wilderness.

Port Hazard

Page Murdock doesn’t know why someone wants him dead, but he knows where the hired killers are coming from. Thus begins Murdoch’s descent into a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than even he has ever seen—San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. With an unwilling backup man, Murdock takes up temporary residence among the whores, gamblers, dope addicts, and cutthroats of the continent’s foulest district. No man here is trustworthy. But perhaps the men who seem respectable are the most insidious of all.

Shoot: the latest in Loren D. Estleman's Valentino mysteries!

Valentino, a mild-manner film archivist at UCLA and sometime film detective, is at the closing party for the Red Montana and Dixie Day museum when he is approached by no less than his hero and man-of-the-hour Red Montana, western film and television star.

Red tells Valentino that he is being blackmailed over the existence of a blue film that his wife, now known throughout the world as the wholesome Dixie Day and the other half of the Montana/Day power couple, made early in her career. With Dixie on her deathbed, Red is desperate to save her the embarrassment of the promised scandal, and offers Valentino a deal-find the movie, and he can have Red's lost film,Sixgun Sonata, that Red has been hiding away in his archives. Don't accept, and the priceless reel will go up in flames.

Feeling blackmailed himself, Valentino agrees and begins to dig. In the surreal world of Hollywood, what is on screen is rarely reality. As he races to uncover the truth before time runs out, his heroes begin their fall from grace. Valentino desperately wants to save Sixgun Sonata...but at what cost?