Title: The Corps Vanishes
Author: Elliott Capon
Email: sirlaffalot44@yahoo.com
Genre: Mystery/Humor
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 1
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Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-corps-vanishes-elliott-capon/1117361072?ean=2940148928898
Zoltan Szábo and his wife Hilka, the
first couple of the Romanian theatre, are forced to flee the fascists in the
mid-1930s and wind up in Hollywood. Big stars in Europe, Zoltan is relegated to
playing a two-bit Poverty Row vampire again and again, while his incredibly
beautiful wife, Hilka, gets a handful of small pointless roles. Zoltan resents
the overwhelming success of Britisher, Ivan Chernov, former truck driver turned
actor, whose deforming facial war wounds (not any notable talent) make him the
perfect horror movie star. Everyone knows about Zoltan’s resentment, and when
Chernov is killed by someone who seems to think he’s a vampire, guilt by public
acclimation is Zoltan’s fate…and now he can’t find work (even his own bloodsucker, i.e. his agent, deserts
him). Mocked by the press and getting little cooperation from the police with
the sort-of help of Hilka (who puts her uncontrollable nymphomania to good use)
and his friend, a homosexual screenwriter named Winston, Zoltan sets out across
the high and low places (mostly the low) of Hollywood to find out for himself: whodunit?
EXCERPT
From The
Hollywood Tattle-Tale, Monday, October 20, 1935:
Peekin' and
Speakin'
by
Clyde Lovecraft
…blah blah blah Alan Ladd….blah blah blah
Samuel Goldwyn…blah blah blah Jean Harlow…blah blah blah James
Cagney…Apparently a certain bloodsucker is just a plain old sucker! Our
everseeing eyes and overhearing ears have it on good authority that at a party
at the home of the dime-a-dozen-er comic Russ Taggert, a certain European
import had a major ex—or was it im?—plosion of monumental proportions.
Since half the rant (yes, reader, the RANT!) was in some foreign tongue, we
can't know completely what the erstwhile Baron Schwartzherz said (oops, did we
let the bat out of the bag? Mee—yoow!), but the Baron, aka, Mr. Hilka Szabó
(and a yum yummy yum yum and a wink to those in the know—whoa, whoa!)
apparently has a non-brotherly love affection for horror and menace Star of
Stars, Ivan Chernov! Several very credible witnesses report to us that Zoltán
Szabó (oops, we let his name slip!) got as plastered as a stuccoed bungalow and
went off on a profanity-laced (we shudder! we tremble!) rant, the gist of which
being that the "B" picture stalwart (that's "B" for
"Bat—ty!") is so possessed of the green-eyed monster toward Chernov,
that we think Zolty's next job in show business will be posing in a leaf-toga
on a can of corn (yow, that's a stretched metaphor, huh, kids?) He called Chernov
every name in the book, and even a few that we haven't seen in the book yet!
Called him a no-talent, f—-er, fellow, and cried—not like the Town Crier cries,
joes and janes, but Cried Like a Baby because Ivan the Wonderful gets all the
plum roles and the plum digs and the plum paychex while all Moltin' Zoltán gets
is the pits! Yowza, whatever happened to HONOUR among thieves in this burg?
Backbiting is supposed to be done BEHIND SOMEONE'S BACK!! We guess they do it
different in Spotsylvania, or wherever the Szabós are from. One thing's for
sure—Zolt the Dolt ain't gonna need glasses in the near future, because he sure
done make a SPECTACLE of himself Saturday night!…blah blah blah Fay Wray…blah
blah blah Shirley Temple….blah blah blah Carole Lombard…
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