Agatha Christie, She Watched - An Excerpt, Review & Giveaway

 Review

AGATHA CHRISTIE, SHE WATCHED
By Teresa Peschel 

AGATHA CHRISTIE, SHE WATCHED is a brilliant big book. And I do mean big! Not only is the book a comprehensive guide to Agatha Christie movies, of which there are a lot, the physical book measures 8.5"x11" and is 430 pages. For each film not only is the basic information listed, cast, locations, the book it's based on, but, most importantly to me a rating of the fidelity to the text. There's also a quality of the movie rating and a sentence describing the film. Along with some photos the author then pens her insightful review with lots of book and filming details. The writing is smart, witty, and infinitely relatable. I chuckled as I was both entertained and educated. 

AGATHA CHRISTIE, SHE WATCHED is a delightful guide offering facts and commentary making it an invaluable resource of Agatha Christie films. 

AGATHA CHRISTIE, SHE WATCHED

by Teresa Peschel

April 6 - May 15, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

One Woman's Plot to Watch 201 Christie Adaptations Without Murdering the Director, Screenwriter, Cast, or Her Husband

 

Care to match wits with Hercule Poirot? Share tea and gossip with Miss Marple? Chase spies with Tommy and Tuppence? "Agatha Christie, She Watched" will introduce you to must-see movies (and must-avoid) dogs that prove Agatha's genius depicting the hopeful and dark sides of human nature. These movies will tantalize you, mystify you, and make you laugh at the folly of humanity.

Teresa Peschel watched and reviewed 201 adaptations, from the German silent movie "Adventures, Inc." (1929) to "See How They Run" and "Why Didn't They Ask Evans" (2022). Each film was rated for fidelity to the original material and its overall quality. Each review takes up two pages and comes with six cast photos, list of major actors, and known film locations. Foreign movies with English subtitles from India, France, Russia, and Japan are included. We include eight movies in which the fictional Agatha Christie solves murder mysteries, debates Poirot, battles a space wasp (in Doctor Who), and plots to kill her husband's mistress.

“Agatha Christie, She Watched” is the only comprehensive collection of reviews about Christie adaptations. Use it to find the movies made from the novels you love, fill in your movie collection or host an Agatha Christie festival of your own.

Praise for Agatha Christie, She Watched:

"From the German silent movie Adventures, Inc. (1929) to Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022), she covers all of your favourites (including the One True Poirot) and some you may never have heard of! The level of detail and vast array of images is incredible."
~ Labours of Hercule podcast

Book Details:

Genre: Movie & Video Reference, Movie & Video Guides & Reviews, Non-Fiction
Published by: Peschel Press
Publication Date: April 7, 2023
Number of Pages: 436 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 9781950347391 (ISBN10: 1950347397)
Book Links: Amazon | KindleUnlimited | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub | Peschel Press

Read an excerpt:

Introduction

I’ve always been a fan of Agatha Christie, but not an obsessive one. I didn’t read and reread the novels. I didn’t go looking for obscure short stories. I didn’t read (and still haven’t) her Mary Westmacott novels. I treated her like most people did: She wrote good mysteries, and if they were handy, I read them.

Then Bill began the Complete, Annotated project by publishing Dorothy L. Sayers’ Whose Body?, followed by Agatha’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Over the years, as he annotated the next five of Agatha’s early novels, I read them carefully for possible footnotes. As I did, I paid more attention to her writing, her deft plotting, her sly sense of humor, and her ability to describe a character with a few sentences.

As I became more familiar with her novels, I realized that she’s underrated, probably because she was categorized as a genre writer. Some even consider her works cozies. Clearly, they never read Appointment with Death (1938), And Then There Were None (1939), or Endless Night (1967). I suspect that her Mary Westmacotts — which are described as romances — are anything but.

The publishing world applies labels to make it easier for bookshops to shelve their books in the store, not because they’re accurate.

In July 2020, as the world began opening up from the Covid-19 shutdowns, I was at the library, looking for a DVD to borrow. I spotted Crooked House (2017). I liked the novel, so I thought, “Why not?”

Crooked House was the second Agatha Christie film adaptation I had seen. Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express (2017) was the first.

We needed fodder for the website (peschelpress.com) and I’d already been reviewing books, so I wrote a review of Crooked House. This reminded me that Bill was working on an annotated edition of The Secret of Chimneys. Was there a movie version? A review for the book would be nice. There was. It was an episode in a box set from ITV’s Marple.

Oookaaaay.

Having become overly familiar with Chimneys, I knew Agatha wrote it years before Miss Marple was a twinkle in her eye. But we watched it anyway. It was terrible. Bill wrote his review for The Complete, Annotated Secret of Chimneys, and I wrote mine for the website.

Since the library’s Marple DVD set included three more episodes, we watched them and I reviewed them for the website.

That’s when Bill said the fateful words that brought us here: “Let’s watch more Agatha films. You write the reviews. I’ll post them on the website, and we’ll publish them as a book.”

So here we are nearly three years later. We had no idea how big the Agatha project would become or how many films have been made for cinema and TV. Bill and I have watched more than 200 adaptations. This includes all the English-language ones we could find beginning with Adventures, Inc. (a 1929 silent movie), and many of the foreign versions too. For those, we were limited by availability and whether or not they had English subtitles. It’s criminal neglect that some of the finest Agatha Christie film adaptations in the world are from Japan, yet they’re unavailable in the West.

To my knowledge, we are the only people who’ve watched all the films. I’m definitely the only person who’s written and posted reviews for all those forgotten TV shows and kinescopes.

Along the way, I became much, much more familiar with Agatha’s writing as I had to read the novels and short stories to compare them to the films. She was cutting edge from the beginning. She invented what we call The Poirot, the practice of bringing together the suspects, explaining the clues, and fingering the criminal. It was a trope born of necessity, when her first attempt — Poirot testifying at the trial — didn’t fly with her publisher.

She began experimenting with narrative structure in 1924 with The Man in the Brown Suit. That novel has two narrators, one of them unreliable. Brown Suit is also a romantic thriller disguised as a mystery. Read the passage where Anne Beddingfeld administers to a mysterious, half-naked, sexy stranger’s wounds. This scene could be ripped from any romance novel of today (the sweet kind, not the spicy which would include far more detail). As a side note, the 1989 TV movie is very true to the text despite being turned into a contemporary.

Agatha was an innovative writer throughout her career. Her The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) is a mash-up of P. G. Wodehouse and John Buchan thrillers. Partners in Crime (1929) is a loose cycle of 16 short stories starring Tommy and Tuppence. Each short story is also a parody of a famous mystery writer, including herself! And unlike Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence aged in real time, from the young, eager lovers in The Secret Adversary (1922) to retired grandparents in Postern of Fate (1973).

And what’s And Then There Were None (1939), in which 10 characters are dispatched in an entertaining manner for their sins, but a PG-rated slasher flick? As a sign of its influence, the basic plot has been lifted, the serial numbers filed off, and rewritten in dozens more novels and movies. The A.B.C. Murders (1936) is a prototypical serial killer novel.

Agatha’s innovations could fill a book and go a long way to explaining why she’s still read today.

The other reason is more subtle.

Whatever you can say about the quality of the adaptations (like The Secret of Chimneys, bleah), they keep Agatha in the public eye. Never underestimate the importance of TV shows and movies on an author’s reputation. For each person who reads, 100 people go to the movies, and a 1,000 people watch TV. Every time an Agatha Christie film is shown, people who’ve never heard of her learn she exists. Some of them search out her books and discover how good her writing is.

When a writer dies, they can vanish under the constant tsunami of books being written and published daily. Dorothy L. Sayers is a prime example. Sayers wrote at the same time as Agatha. She’s highly regarded and her books are great. But her estate, unlike Agatha’s, shows no interest in licensing her stories and novels for TV or movies. Say the phrase: “Murder at Downton Abbey,” then ask why her literary estate isn’t capitalizing on Lord Peter Wimsey, detective in the peerage and a duke’s brother.

The Agatha Christie estate does not want her writing to suffer that fate, so they license her short stories and novels. Some adaptations are excellent; some are dreadful. For a few, the only commonality between novel and film is the name. Most range in between but all have something to offer, even if it’s only great period clothes, quality acting, or English Country House Porn. Linenfold paneling! Crenelated ceilings! Parquet floors as elaborate as the finest Persian carpet!

Excuse me while I stop and fan myself.

Watching 200+ Agatha adaptations also taught me plenty about filmmaking, pacing, and soundtracks. I can now, sometimes, recognize an actor from another adaptation. I’ve enjoyed seeing how one novel can be interpreted multiple ways, resulting in wildly different films. The Pale Horse (1961) is a good example. The three films (including Miss Marple in one!) are recognizably the same story, yet they’ve nothing to do with each other. The emphasis is different, the characters different, the tone is different.

I’ve watched 13 different Poirots (including an anime version). Seven different Marples (including an anime version). Multiple Tommy and Tuppences. Each actor or actress brings something new to the character.

The foreign films demonstrate how universal she is. She wrote about dysfunctional families, mapped the class divide, noticed the lengths we go to for status and security, and found reasons for murder ranging from money to passion to safety.

Ironically, foreign filmmakers respect Agatha more than she is at home. Appointment with Death (1938) has been filmed three times, but the Japanese version is the only one that captures the novel’s cruelty and horror. The two English language versions fail, one moderately and one spectacularly. Of the four versions of The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (1962), only the Japanese version gives a voice to Margo Bence, one of Agatha’s most abused secondary characters. The other three versions ignore her because to face Margo Bence’s pain would mean admitting that the film business cares nothing for children unless they can be sold to make money.

We did not watch every single foreign TV episode even when they were readily available. There just wasn’t enough time. The best we could do was see enough to convey the flavor of a given series. If you want to see them, enjoy yourself! They provide very different views of Agatha and can be rewarding.

The novel that’s been adapted the most is And Then There Were None (1939). We saw ten versions, ranging from a blurry kinescope to slick studio productions with an all-star cast, so it merits its own chapter. Some versions hew to the stage play with its radically rewritten ending. Others stick to the novel, nihilism intact. Some combine the stage play and the novel, so Vera Claythorne learns who the puppet master was, begs for her life, and receives rough justice.

One final warning before you go: spoilers abound, so beware! Unlike Agatha, I don’t play fair with my reviews and hide whodunnit. Where I play fair is in telling you what I thought of them. I liked films that critics panned, and I disliked films others loved. I say why. I go down sidetracks. I enjoyed myself and I hope you will too.

So won’t you join me for an Agatha Christie Movie Marathon? You’ve got hundreds of hours of viewing pleasure ahead of you. Just remember to never accept a cup of tea you didn’t make, or take trips to lonely islands (or châteaus, or country houses) with strangers.

How to use this book

The films are organized by the starring detective. Miss Marple comes first, followed by Poirot, and Tommy and Tuppence. Next, a chapter is devoted exclusively to And Then There Were None, followed by the rest of the adaptations, and the final chapter is movies in which Agatha herself is the star.

Each chapter opens with a photo gallery showing the actors and actresses who played her detectives and characters.

There’s also an index, which is more important than it appears.

Seems logical, yes? Except that some adaptations removed Agatha’s chosen detective, turning the novel into a police procedural. When that happens, the movie is not included in the detective’s chapter. It’s included in “The Rest of the Christies”. Many of the foreign adaptations fall into this category.

Other adaptations (cough, ITV’s Marple, cough) insert a detective who didn’t exist in the novel. That’s why many standalone novels appear in the Miss Marple chapter. She’s now the star of The Sittaford Mystery, Murder Is Easy, The Pale Horse, and others. She also appears in a Tommy and Tuppence novel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs. Similarly, Margaret Rutherford snatched two Poirot novels and made them her own, so they appear in the Miss Marple chapter.

The chapters dedicated to And Then There Were None and the movies not part of a detective series are self- evident. “Agatha the Star,” however, deserves an explanation. In addition to her stories, Agatha’s life has become fodder for Hollywood. This includes the dreadful Vanessa Redgrave/Dustin Hoffman biopic Agatha (1979), a documentary that quotes from her and her work, a Doctor Who episode, and three movies that show Agatha’s exciting life investigating mysteries in a parallel universe. It focuses on Agatha, not her writing. Any relationship to Agatha’s real life should be considered coincidental. Even the documentary in this chapter is not entirely reliable.

Within each chapter, the films are organized chronologically. As you move forward in time, you’ll see changes in how a character was depicted and movie-making styles. Adventures, Inc. (1929) sets the stage. It’s the earliest Agatha film and the scriptwriter, Jane Bess, played fast and loose with the text. She led the way for hack screenwriters everywhere to rewrite Agatha’s prose.

Each review gets two pages. We chose a banner image and six photos of important cast members. I rate films by fidelity to text (or life in “Agatha the Star,” and either the play or the novel in And Then There Were None) and by the quality of the movie overall. The two ratings are separate, but they complement each other and give you a clearer understanding of what to expect.

The cast lists place detectives and police at the top. Everyone else follows in rough order of importance. We group families together to make it easier to work out relationships. Our cast lists are not comprehensive but the main characters are there.

Also note that for those foreign films which don’t name their characters from the novel, we provide that information. This was omitted when they rewrote them so much (such as Unknown (1965), the Indian version of And Then There Were None) that it would not be helpful.

At the end of the list come the film locations, or (in a couple episodes) a song list. Internet Movie Database and Agatha Christie Wiki provided most of the locations, but Bill added to that from other sources (see the bibliography). Knowing the film locations means you, dear reader, can visit the same castle as Poirot or Miss Marple.

Subtitles matter to me. We always looked for versions with subtitles as so many actors mumble or the sound quality is bad. If I can’t understand the dialog, I miss important points. Not every DVD was released with subtitles.

Fortunately, some of the older films like the Joan Hickson Miss Marples are being cleaned up for streaming. They get subtitles. But they aren’t being released as new DVDs so, no subtitles. If you can watch a streamed version, no problem. If you must use your TV and DVD player, you’re out of luck.

We had to have subtitles for the foreign films. We couldn’t see some films we wanted to (we especially regret passing up the Japanese Murder on the Orient Express) because they either weren’t available with subtitles or they weren’t available at all.

The index will help you find a specific film. This isn’t just because some novels got Miss Marple inserted, putting them into the Miss Marple chapter. Agatha’s novels were often released under different names. For example, the novel Lord Edgware Dies (1933) was released in the U.S. as Thirteen At Dinner. It’s been filmed three times, twice as Lord Edgware Dies and once as Thirteen At Dinner. But they’re all based on the same novel and the index connects them.

I list all the names, with a note as to which film it applies to. Or, as with Margaret Rutherford, the film’s name doesn’t correspond to any edition of the novel but I tell you what to look for.

The bibliography provides further reading and shows where some of my information came from.

Enjoy the book. We enjoyed watching the movies, podcasting about many of them, and writing the reviews. We want it to be used, encouraging you to watch Agatha Christie on the screen, always different but always her.

How the movies are rated

Each movie is given two ratings. Fidelity of text is exactly what it sounds. How close is the film to the original text? Sometimes, only the names match. Other films are so faithful, they’re lifeless.

Quality of movie is about the movie itself. Did everything together work as a film? Often, a very good movie isn’t faithful to the text at all (see Miss Marple in Ordeal By Innocence (2007)). If something jars about the movie, I’ll indicate it here.

The rating icons demonstrate Agatha’s many, many ways of killing. Blunt objects, poisoned cocktails, garrotes, knives, guns, stranglers, being pushed down a flight of stairs. They usually reflect the first murder in the film.

A few films, such as And Then There Were None, get five different symbols to reflect all the ways those nasty people got iced.

How to find the movies

We watched the vast majority of the films on DVD on our TV set, the one our neighbors were throwing away. You’re correct that we count our pennies.

That’s why we use our public library. If yours is like ours, it contains a surprisingly large collection of Agatha Christie films. All you have to do is get a library card to borrow them.

You may, like us, have access to more than one library. It’s worth learning what’s available in your area. We belong to our local library (the Hershey Public Library) and to our county library (the much larger Dauphin County Public Library). They often carry different titles so I always check both before moving on to the next step.

Your library is bigger than your municipality, your county, or even your state. Ask for the interlibrary loan librarian. For us, it’s Denise Philips. Denise got us all kinds of DVDs from libraries across the country. This service is usually free, as libraries are tax-supported. Ask and you may be very pleased. The interlibrary loan may take a few weeks for the requested movie to arrive, but it nearly always will.

If Denise could not get us a title, Bill would search eBay and Amazon. We bought a universal DVD player so we could play DVDs from Europe.

There were obscure kinescopes that were on YouTube, so we watched them on the computer.

There are streaming services, including Amazon which gave us access to Britbox. Dailymotion let us watch the Japanese films.

We don’t recommend skeevy pirate sites. They’re illegal, don’t pay royalties to the creators, and whatever you get will be loaded with viruses and malware and the film may be incomplete or damaged.

*** A review ***

The Sittaford Mystery (2006)

Epic expansion of Trevelyan’s life
leaves little room for a coherent
mystery for Miss Marple to sort out

Fidelity to text: 1 pharaoh’s curse

The novel was eviscerated. The murder, séance, escaped prisoner, and a few names remain. Everything else, including the murderer, were altered beyond recognition. Miss Marple resented being shoved in; she stayed defiantly offstage for long stretches.

Quality of movie: 1½ pharaoh’s curses

The scriptwriter shoved ten pounds of plot into a five-pound running length and the result is incoherence with snow.

The Review

Queue up Sir Mix-a-Lot and “Baby Got Back” and recite along with me:

Oh. My. God.
Look at that plot!

You’ll have to sit through this episode twice (at least) to understand what’s going on. This film is 93 minutes long, not long enough for all the disparate plot threads to be woven in a cohesive fashion. The film needed a minimum of another twenty minutes running time to do it justice.

But since ITV didn’t do that, you, dear viewer, will be left asking what just happened? Rewind, dammit! That’s what we did. Repeatedly. Yet there were many moments when I still can’t tell you what was going on.

The trouble starts with forcing Miss Marple into a property that was never written for her. This can work: see ITV’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs, a Tommy and Tuppence novel.

Not here. In fact, Miss Marple disappeared for long stretches of the film, doing heaven only knows what in Sittaford House while sitting out the blizzard. Maybe she was questioning the staff (we only see one servant in the mansion but there must be more), knitting, and speed-reading Captain Trevelyan’s memoirs. She certainly wasn’t at the Three Crowns Inn, inspecting the body and questioning the guests, even though most of the action takes place there.

An entirely new plot is shoehorned in, vastly expanding Captain Trevelyan’s character and backstory. Suddenly, he’s a war hero (WWI), a suspected war profiteer (WWII), an Olympic skater in between (I think; the dialog was incomprehensible at many key points), a major candidate to be the next prime minister (Winston Churchill (!) has a scene with Captain Trevelyan), and he’s a noted archeologist having discovered a major tomb in Egypt back in 1927 that made his fortune! Compared with Capt. Trevelyan, Indiana Jones was a lazy amateur.

But all this rewriting was necessary to give Timothy Dalton scenery to chew to earn his paycheck. In the novel, Captain Trevelyan exists to be swiftly murdered. He doesn’t even get one line. In the movie — since he’s Timothy Dalton — when he’s not emoting in front of us, he’s the topic of conversation by the other characters.

Which I can understand. It’s Timothy Dalton, and my goodness does he look yummy. Some men age very well and he belongs to that lucky cohort. He’s also got to be expensive so the producers made sure to get their money’s worth. Pity they didn’t spend some of their money on a better script or more film stock.

But he didn’t age that well. I had a hard time believing that virginal, lovely, dewy, eighteen-year-old Violet Willets (Carey Mulligan) fell madly in love with a man old enough to be her grandfather. I know why he did, and it’s not just because Violet resembles the woman he callously abandoned twenty-five years prior in Egypt. Violet is delicious, naïve, and believes every word he says and what man doesn’t want that? As for Violet, she didn’t come across as a gold-digger, which is the usual reason sweet 18-year-olds marry men old enough to be their grandfather. Or maybe she was one and the tacked-on ending where Violet runs off to Argentina with Emily Trefusis proves it.

Violet certainly wasn’t broken up about her husband being murdered on their wedding night. If anything, she seemed relieved. She got it all. The Trevelyan name, the inheritance, two tickets to Buenos Aires, and she didn’t have to sacrifice her sweet toothsome body to some old man, even if he was Timothy Dalton.

The Egyptian subplot was of major importance yet it didn’t make any sense. There was the paranormal aspect too, with a ghostly maiden showing up in Captain Trevelyan’s visions. Was there a curse on the gold scorpion? Was he going crazy? We’re never told. The ghost follows a different movie’s script when it appears and vanishes.

This script also doesn’t tell us how an Egyptian servant can show up in isolated Sittaford in 1949 and get hired on, no questions asked. I understand that the servant problem was bad enough that the upper crust didn’t ask as many questions as they could. But here? Really?

We know Captain Trevelyan did potentially bad things in Egypt. Yet he wasn’t suspicious when this mysterious Egyptian showed up at his door? He’d been having weird dreams about his past. He’s got a burgeoning political career which means close scrutiny of his private life. He’s supposed to be a smart man.

Add in the even more incoherent subplot about the escaped prisoner from Dartmoor prison. None of that made sense; not the purchase of the inn a year prior to the events of the story, not the backstory of how the star-crossed lovers met, not how the prisoner escaped from Dartmoor prison and found his way across the moors to be reunited with his paramour and cousin and their eventual escape to freedom.

There’s also the American war profiteer who helped Captain Trevelyan make a fortune manufacturing substandard munitions that killed more American sailors than the enemy. The American war profiteer’s personal aide-de-camp and quack doctor made even less sense. Why did the war profiteer need him around, other than as a dogsbody? There was mumbled dialog that sounded like they were both in the mafia, but it was unclear.

We also meet the incompetent government clerk who’s looking into Captain Trevelyan’s background to ensure nothing questionable is revealed to the press, thus discrediting the party. He’s not doing a very good job if Captain Trevelyan was a known associate of American war profiteers and he doesn’t know.

Then there’s Charles Burnaby. In the novel, he’s boy-reporter Charles Enderby. The name change was the first step in his complete reworking of motives and backstory. Yet we get no foreshadowing of his dramatic personal life or of his connections to the Trevelyan family.

We get almost nothing of James Pearson’s connection to Captain Trevelyan either. We get even less of a reason for Emily Trefusis to be engaged to James Pearson, boy alcoholic, other than that old standby: He’ll inherit big when Captain Trevelyan dies. Maybe that’s why Emily runs off to Argentina with Violet. She gets the money and the girl and doesn’t have to marry the boy alcoholic.

I could rant on, but you get the picture: This movie was a mess, barely suitable for Timothy Dalton fans. ITV could have saved the cost of his salary and paid for a better script. Or, they could have capitalized on Timothy Dalton and added another twenty minutes of movie, explaining all the subplots and how they connected.

General Information

Based on: The Sittaford Mystery (U.S. title: The Murder at Hazelmoor; novel, 1931)

Run time: 1 hr., 40 min. Subtitles: No

Writer: Stephen Churchett

Director: Paul Unwin

Cast

Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple

Timothy Dalton as Clive Trevelyan
Mel Smith as John Enderby
Jeffery Kissoon as Ahmed Ghali
Laurence Fox as James Pearson
Zoe Telford as Emily Trefusis
James Murray as Charles Burnaby
Rita Tushingham as Miss Elizabeth Percehouse
Michael Brandon as Martin Zimmerman
Paul Kaye as Dr. Ambrose Burt
Patricia Hodge as Mrs. Evadne Willett
Carey Mulligan as Violet Willett
Matthew Kelly as Donald Garfield
James Wilby as Stanley Kirkwood
Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill

Film Locations

The Flower Pot Pub, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (pub exterior)
Dorney Court, Dorney, Buckinghamshire (Sittaford House interiors)

***

Excerpt from Agatha Christie, She Watched by Teresa Peschel. Copyright 2023 by Teresa Peschel. Reproduced with permission from Teresa Peschel. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Teresa Peschel never planned to become a writer, nor did she plan to become an expert on film versions of Agatha Christie stories. Then, as a supportive wife, Teresa read and edited Bill’s annotations to Agatha’s first six novels. A desire to promote the books led to writing movie reviews for the Peschel Press website, which led to Bill suggesting they could publish a collection quickly. Two and a half years later, Agatha Christie, She Watched was born. This book got Teresa — and Bill as her supportive husband — an invitation to speak at the 2024 Agatha Christie festival in England.

Like Agatha Christie, Teresa reinvented herself and because of Agatha Christie, she’s become a better writer.

Catch Up With Teresa Peschel:

PeschelPress.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @peschel
Instagram - @peschel_press
YouTube - @peschelpress9911
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Facebook - @PeschelPress

 

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Round Up the Unusual Suspects - A Review, Excerpt, & Giveaway

 Review

ROUND UP THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS by Elizabeth Crowens
The Third  Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery

Babs Norman and her partner, Guy Brandt, have a new case. A body has been found on the set of Yankee Doodle Dandy and Jack Warner has hired the gumshoes to solve the case. With shooting ending on the Cagney film the detectives move their search for a killer to the set of Casablanca. But solving a murder isn't the only problem they face. The government is mandating the internment of Japanese residents, but Babs is intent on hiding her lodger, Mr. Otake. With trouble on the set including pilfering and Bogart's mercurial wife, not to mention an unfinished script, plus the threat of losing their PI license or even jail time for hiding Mr. Otake, will Babs and Guy be able to flush out a killer? 

In addition to being a line from the film Round up the Usual Suspects also happens to be a film about the making of the movie Casablanca. It's no wonder the slight variation, ROUND UP THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS is the title of the third Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery. While the dead body on the set of one film is the murder Babs and Guy are hired to solve, the book itself is less of a mystery and more a behind the scenes look at the filming of this classic. It's interesting and I enjoyed learning about it, but found little mystery involved. In fact, I didn't see much investigation at all. Sure they corralled the stars of the film to help talk to the extras, but what were they asking? How were they investigating? I liked the fact that real people such as Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart, and Ingrid Bergman were important characters. And I loved seeing Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet again. But if the killer didn't admit to what happened no one would have known!

I enjoyed the various glimpses at different aspects of life at the time. I find the whole concept of the internment of the Japanese to be abhorrent and the subplot of Mr. Otake was the most emotional part of the book. I'm not sure the lavender marriage was a good idea, certainly the pair doesn't live together well. 

ROUND UP THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS provides rich historical details within the Casablanca setting making an interesting and informative WWII murder mystery.

 

******************************************************************** 

ROUND UP THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

by Elizabeth Crowens

March 9 - April 17, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery

 

Against the backdrop of WWII, no one expected to find a murdered stagehand on a Warner Brothers sound stage. With so much at stake, Jack L. Warner hires Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, the two young private eyes who recently resolved his high-profile Maltese Falcon/Blackbird Killer Case. Social justice crusader Leon Lewis suspects local Nazi sympathizers are responsible. Lewis assigns a German stuntman, a veteran of the decadent subculture of Weimar Berlin nightlife and one of his newest operatives, to join forces with the private detectives.

According to Warner, the show must go on, but everything from bomb scares to the Japanese internment, to unruly parrots, forbidden love, and family crises conspires against solving the crime. “As Time Goes By,” actors Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and the rest of the Casablanca ensemble join the professional private eyes to round up the unusual suspects and capture the killer.

Love 1940s classic movies? Treat yourself to the award-winning Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles (Book 1) and Bye, Bye Blackbird (Book 2) of Elizabeth Crowens’ Babs Norman’s Golden Age of Hollywood mystery series by Level Best Books.

Round Up the Unusual Suspects Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery with humor
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: January 20, 2026
Number of Pages: 328
ISBN: 979-8-89820-189-0 (paperback)
Series: A Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery, Book 3 || Amazon, Goodreads
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

Mystery Series

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Read an excerpt from Round Up the Unusual Suspects:

Chapter One

“Nobody’s allowed to die on one of my sets!” hollered Jack L. Warner. “Who’s the jackass who wants to halt my production?”

Flanked by his personal assistant Bill Schaefer, Jack dragged Hal B. Wallis, his head of production, over to the sound stage filming Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney. He swung open the door as soon as the red warning light turned off and stormed inside.

Michael Curtiz, the film’s director, dumped his megaphone and threw down the gauntlet. The parade band on stage accompanied his rage with a drumroll and cymbals.

Warner nabbed Curtiz’s discarded megaphone. “Rally the troops—all of them! I have a studio-wide announcement.”

Curtiz, turning red, clamped his hands over his ears. The actors and background extras, dressed in woolen military uniforms, stopped marching and sweltered under the hot lights. The live orchestra fell silent.

“Sir, maybe we should check out the dead body first,” Schaefer suggested with hesitation.

At Warner’s command, an assistant rolled back a piece of movable scenery to reveal a prone figure, an unknown young man wearing bloodied street clothes, but with a swastika carved on his neck.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Warner asked. “He looks like he’s just sleeping on the job.”

Backing up a few steps, Wallis broke out in a cold sweat. “Has any-one been a-ble to i-den-ti-fy him?”

The assistant director strained to keep self-control but trembled. “Every-one denies knowing him. Our director, however, insisted we ignore the victim and stay on schedule.”

Wallis, turning green, gulped down his rising bile but regained his voice. “That’s unconscionable. We should secure the set. Everyone will have to swear to secrecy, and under no circumstances is the press to know about it.” Schaefer clutched his stomach, and his knees became unsteady. He grabbed a chair to brace himself.

Jack L. strutted the sound stage like Napoleon planning a counterattack and examined the casualty of war with a sense of unnerving calm. He wrinkled his nose and instructed his assistant, “Better call the Burbank PD. Won’t take long under these broiling lights for him to stink to high heaven.” The actors, who’d remained in the stance of military attention, were about to wilt. Offstage, on both sides, waited singers and female tap dancers dressed in skimpy satin costumes as a tribute to Uncle Sam.

“At ease!” Warner shouted, accompanied by a round of relieved sighs. “You think you can direct my film picture?” Curtiz shouted in his choppy version of Hungarian-bastardized English.

“I can and I will,” Warner barked. “Don’t forget, I sign your paychecks! Furthermore, I still can’t understand why you summoned half the musicians’ union to play instruments off-camera when you could’ve used a recording. Money wasted!”

Curtiz glared, with fire in his eyes. “It’s because they’re featured on camera at the beginning and the end of the scene!” He cursed in his native Hungarian tongue and stormed off the set.

Jimmy Cagney, the star of the show, followed. “You can find me in my dressing room.”

Undaunted by his director and lead actor’s histrionics, Warner demanded to see the production notes. After a quick glance, he scraped his fingernails through his receding hairline.

“Too much…can’t picture it. Summon your editors and set up a projector—somewhere—anywhere, on the damned wall if we must. I’d need to see the dailies and bring me that hot-headed Hungarian Goulash Gulag Meister and his la-di-da lead actor.”

Wallis broke the point of his pencil by slamming it down on his notepad. “All these delays…I don’t want to hear a word from you about going over budget.”

“I’m the one who makes the final decisions. Respect your commanding officer!” Warner admonished his confused subordinate.

Wallis gave him a weak salutation, but only out of respect. “Aye! Aye, sir!” Warner gave one last look at the body. “Go ahead, call the police,” he said to Schaefer. “And hire those two private detectives.”

Wallis scratched his head with a look as if a screwball comedian had thrown a cream pie in his face. “Who?” he asked.

Warner clenched his jaw. “Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, those young kids who solved the Blackbird Killer Case and saved the cast of The Maltese Falcon. That was a close call for everyone.”

* * *

The phone rang at B. Norman Investigations. Guy picked up and said Jack Warner’s assistant was on the line. Babs motioned for him to hand over the receiver.

“The Big Boss desires your company,” Schaefer told her.

“If he doesn’t mind throwing in two mouth-watering prime-rib dinners at the Smoke House for us,” Babs said, who hadn’t eaten all day, “we’ll consider that his consultation fee.”

The two PI partners headed downstairs to their building’s garage, where they now had their own assigned adjacent parking spaces instead of playing roulette for empty spots on the street. Babs put her key into the ignition of her ailing Crosley—the Clown Car, the brunt of Guy’s constant jokes, with a paint job that resembled a motley patchwork. The moment she put her foot on the gas pedal, it made a bone-shaking screech of metal against metal and emitted exhaust that would’ve choked a triceratops.

“We’re taking mine,” Guy said after he stopped wheezing. He rolled up his windows to keep out the foul scent. “Can’t believe you never had the sense to replace that fossil since it never ran well.”

They pulled out of the garage, and he donned his sunglasses. “Now, you’re stuck with it since our government stopped new automobile production and only people in vital professions, such as doctors and clergymen, qualify to purchase remaining inventories.”

“Private eyes don’t have priority?”

He shook his head. “Not in your sweet life. Those assembly lines are being converted to produce tanks, aircraft, and weapons for the military. Mark my words. Next thing you know, they’ll demand that we ration fuel and rubber for our tires like they do in England. Read the papers if you don’t believe me.”

Guy flashed his Warner Brothers pass to the gate security guard. Babs panicked as she searched inside her purse. “I must’ve left mine in my car.”

“Try flirting,” Guy whispered.

She snorted in defiance. “I will not!”

Much to her surprise, he sweet-talked his way into saying, “She’s with me,” and pulled into an empty guest parking slot.

When they arrived at the Yankee Doodle sound stage, the crime scene investigation was well underway. The Burbank PD sectioned off the area where the deceased lay, but nearby, Curtiz insisted on conducting rehearsals even if it was too noisy to roll sound. He ordered the gaffer and his electrical crew to prep the lights for the next set of shots, but they went berserk, thinking a light was shorting out every time the crime scene photographer’s flashbulb went off.

Curtiz insisted his captive cast and crew finish what they started. He’d work around the police, even if it meant yelling and screaming, at the risk of losing his voice, to make sure they kept quiet.

“Isn’t Jimmy Cagney your star?” Guy looked around for the missing actor.

Curtiz made an unintelligible grunt and spat into his handkerchief. “We shall work around his crybaby tantrums.” He launched a new battle with Wallis. “You complain that clocks ticking means money. Then why does Warner have to be such a stingy fat cat?”

Wallis bit his lip to keep from laughing at the director’s deliberate jabs at the English language. “Our detectives-for-hire are here.” He pointed out Babs and Guy. “Jack wants you to perform the entire number, Yankee Doodle Dandy, from start to finish.”

The director stood his ground. “That’s not how we shoot it. We fall behind schedule. Then Jack gets more and more angry.”

Warner paced the floor, bellyaching to himself and to any of the cops who would listen. “What if Cagney had been the intended victim? Not that I’m glad this man is an unknown Joe Palooka, but you get where I’m coming from.”

The moment Babs saw the corpse, her stomach lurched. Guy took his handkerchief and covered his nose and mouth. “Did you find any ID?”

“Found a driver’s license in his wallet,” said one cop. “He’s got a German-sounding name: Gerhard Sauer.”

Warner, holding a script, muscled in on their conversation. “I want to see this scene played out from start to finish.”

Since Cagney left the set, Guy volunteered to stand in and improvise his choreography, but the studio head ignored his suggestion. “If that fussy thespian wants to act like a child, I’ll just have to take over and go through the motions.”

Babs took her notepad out of her pocketbook. “Did anyone hear any strange noises?” She looked around for reactions but got none. “Did you consider that someone killed Sauer elsewhere and, for whatever reason, dumped his body backstage?”

Babs blew her anger out of her nose. No one seemed to listen. Wallis gave the PIs an overview to get them up to speed. “The film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, is about the life of lyricist and composer George M. Cohan. He performed with his family, and they called themselves The Four Cohans. Playing his father, we’ve got the famous actor who played the shot-up Captain Jacoby from The Maltese Falcon, Walter Huston.”

“Give My Regards to Broadway is also one of Cohan’s famous songs,” Guy mentioned.

“We’ve included that one, along with Over There. All patriotic numbers that helped us endure WWI. Just think, we have a song for every star and a star for every stripe.”

Wallis stopped and scratched his chin. “You know…I rather like that line. Must insist on using that quote for our trailer. However, what you’ll see on screen is a show within a show, as if our cinematographer was shooting a documentary. At the beginning and the end of the scene, the camera will pan, showing an establishing shot of everyone inside the theater. That’s where our live orchestra comes in.

“The Cohans perform in a stage production of a show titled George Washington, Jr. The song-and-dance medley scene we had been shooting before everything went haywire centers on Grand Old Flag. Once edited, it will look like we shot it from start to finish, but since Warner told me you used to be actors, you probably know that most of the time we shoot scenes out of order. We’ll stop within sections to film close-ups and from different angles. Everyone’s curious to see if there are clues about the killer in the footage we’ve shot so far.”

Babs asked Wallis if he’d drop her a line when the footage was available for viewing.

Jack Warner, however, seemed to have his own agenda. He took over as director and insisted on doing a dry run. “Up with the curtain! Places, please. Stand by, and on with the show of the century. It’s the most original thing to hit Broadway. You know why? Cagney…or Cohan, to be more accurate, is the whole darned U.S. of A. squeezed into one pair of pants.”

Wallis asked the PIs to follow him and take seats with the extras in the audience.

“How many actors does the scene start off with?” Babs asked.

“Not including the live orchestra and the packed seats filled with the audience, I guess there are about thirty-five, but more join in later.”

Lighter on his feet than expected, Warner skipped across the stage and justified substituting for Cagney, who refused to leave his dressing room. “Believe it or not, I’ve had experience as an entertainer. When my brothers and I started our family business, I used to sing in the aisles in between screenings.”

Wallis drew a deep breath and released it. “There he goes again. The boss loves telling everyone the story of his debut in show business. Often, I wonder whether Jack secretly always wanted to be a performer instead of running a studio.” He explained the upcoming scene while everyone blocked the action. “Jimmy sings Grand Old Flag. Twenty young Boy Scouts stride in from the top of the stairs. Betsy Ross sews the flag, upstage center. Eight more adults, who look like members of a military band, join them in song and advance from upstage right. After that, we cut away to five or six members of a fife and drum corps.”

The PIs made every effort to follow Wallis while Warner danced on stage with the hired actors. “Upstage left, a variety of singers march forward, representing the common man and the working class—policemen, bakers, bankers, a nurse, miners, railroad workers—showing their solidarity. Everyone turns toward the flag and breaks into My Country, ’Tis of Thee in front of people manning an anti-aircraft gun.”

Guy, who had been counting on his fingers, lost track. “How many would that add?”

“Probably another thirty. Central Casting must’ve broken out bottles of champagne after receiving our requisitions. Then the stage curtains close, and the spotlight falls on Cagney, downstage right. In come the tap- dancing dames, many bearing American flags. This is where we rival MGM’s schmaltzy musicals with their elaborate costumes and choreography. Enter Uncle Sam, played by Walter Huston, and the Statue of Liberty. Then Jimmy wows everyone with his signature dance steps. More female flag bearers emerge from behind the rear curtain. Our stage crew has rigged the floor with conveyor belts, giving the illusion that the actors are marching toward the audience while they’re actually staying in place.”

“Otherwise, they’d march right off the stage,” said Babs.

“Correct, but we wouldn’t want them to do that,” Wallis explained. “As the cinematographer pulls back and widens the focal length of his lens, background curtains continue to open until we see a painted backdrop of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. I’m no expert in visual effects, but it gives the audience the feeling there must be well over a hundred people proceeding down the boulevard. Pretty spectacular, don’t you think?”

The assistant director leapt onstage and reminded Warner that the soldier actors were still suffering under the scorching lights and waiting for their next order. “Sir, we’re not rolling camera. We should dismiss them.”

“Tell them it’s a wrap until further notice. I won’t approve an exorbitant dry-cleaning bill for everyone schvitzing in their costumes.”

With military precision, the assistants rounded up the various groups of performers and shuttled them toward wardrobe. Curtiz and James Wong Howe, his cinematographer, remained to discuss how they’d execute the rest of that scene.

Warner scribbled a note and handed it to his assistant. “Bill, tell these two to drop everything. I’m calling a meeting to order and want them present.”

Schaefer reviewed his memo pad. “Sir, you scheduled one with them already.” Then he checked his watch. “They should be there…right now.”

Jack pointed to Babs and Guy. “Then you’re coming with me and away from the crime scene.” In a rush, he sprinted ahead.

Babs shouted loudly enough for him to hear her as he gained distance. “We’ll need to sign a contract to make our assignment official!”

“Pick up the pace, you slowpokes, and I’ll cut you a check after we get there.”

***

Excerpt from Round Up the Unusual Suspects by Elizabeth Crowens. Copyright 2026 by Elizabeth Crowens. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Crowens. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Elizabeth Crowens is bi-coastal between New York and Los Angeles, where she has worn many hats in the entertainment industry. Awards include Lefty nominee for Best Humorous Mystery, Agatha nominee in multiple categories, MWA-NY Chapter Leo B. Burstein Scholarship, NYFA grant, Eric Hoffer Award, Glimmer Train, Killer Nashville Claymore finalist, Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Top Picks, two Grand prize and six First prize Chanticleer Awards. Crowens writes Golden Age of Hollywood mystery with humor and alternate history in her Time Traveler Professor series. She also has a popular Caption Contest on Facebook.

Catch Up With Elizabeth Crowens:

www.ElizabethCrowens.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @ecrowens
Instagram - @crowens_author
X - @ECrowens
Facebook - @thereel.elizabeth.crowens
BlueSky - @elizabethcrowens.bsky.social

 

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Currently Reading...

I'm currently reading Round up the Unusual Suspects by Elizabeth Crowens. This book is the third in the Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery series and was released earlier this year.

Babs Norman and her partner, Guy Brandt, have a new case. A body has been found on the set of Yankee Doodle Dandy and Jack Warner has hired the gumshoes to solve the case. With shooting ending on the Cagney film the detectives move their search for a killer to the set of Casablanca. But solving a murder isn't the only problem they face. The government is mandating the internment of Japanese residents, but Babs is intent on hiding her lodger, Mr. Otake. With trouble on the set including pilfering and Bogart's mercurial wife, not to mention an unfinished script, plus the threat of losing their PI license or even jail time for hiding Mr. Otake, will Babs and Guy be able to flush out a killer?

Murder Movie Club - A Guest Post & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Rishard to Cozy Up With Kathy. You can find Rishard on the pages of MURDER MOVIE CLUB: MURDER ON A MONDAY by Marcy Blesy. This is the first book in the Monthly Murder Movie Club Mystery series which was released last month.

Hello. My name is Rishard. I’m a 60-year-old man who hopes to have a heck of a lot more life to live. I’ve lived most of that life in Northwoods, Michigan, a beautiful town along the shores of Lake Michigan. One might say I’ve been unlucky in love. Four marriages sounds like a bit, but I’m not giving up hope of finding that perfect mate to spend the rest of my life with. In fact, there’s even someone in the Monthly Murder Movie Club that’s caught my eye, but it’s such a beautiful friendship that Yoly and I have, I don’t know if we should mess it up. Plus, she has no idea I find her special, and she still spends a lot of time talking to Larry, her first husband. He lives on her kitchen table in his urn. It’s tough to compete against that. 

I like to stand out. Some say my style is odd, especially Roberta, but her use of nice words is few and far between. Maybe when I’m 75, I’ll be more loose-lipped, too. I hope not, though. I wear a lot of Hawaiian shirts. The brighter, the better. I have a nice assortment of Crocs to pair with my outfits. It’s not the wisest choice of attire during the brutal winters, but I like to think that I add some cheer to those with the winter blues.

I’ve recently found my people in a very odd club that meets at the Northwoods Movie Theater. We are the Monthly Murder Movie Club, though sometimes we meet more than once a month now. We have a shared interest in murder movies. The only rule is that none of us has seen the movie before. Halfway through the movie, Junior or Pamela stop the projector, well, not Junior anymore after his untimely passing in the theater’s lobby. Anyway, while the movie is paused, we gather to discuss our best whodunit theories. We write everything down. Yoly, our unofficial leader, holds on to our theories until the end of the movie. The person closest to figuring out the mystery gets to keep a cool plastic trophy for the month, unless there’s a tie. Then we have to work out the trophy’s custody. I’ve won the trophy a time or two. The last time I won, I tied with Vicki. She wanted to keep her trophy at her beauty salon. She likes to boast, but she means well, so I had to turn it over to her there. She touched up my hair for free.

There’s a new member of our group. April is a single mom who just had her first baby in her 40s. She’s struggling, but she’s smart. I know she will figure things out. Plus, Giana is everyone’s adopted grandchild. I think she is a very lucky baby if you ask me.

All and all, we get along great and have so much fun trying to outwit each other. There are a lot of amazing murder mystery movies out there. What a fun genre! Recently, our movie-watching has taken a pause as some unfortunate real murders crossed the path of our movie club. But have no fear. We’ll solve those mysteries, too.

Life in this new decade is proving to be amazing!

****************************************************************************

 Murder Movie Club: Murder on a Monday (Monthly Murder Movie Club Cozy Mystery) by Marcy Blesy

About Murder Movie Club

Murder Movie Club: Murder on a Monday (Monthly Murder Movie Club Cozy Mystery)
Cozy Mystery 1st in Series
Setting - Michigan
Independently Published (February 21, 2025)
Print length: ‎ 119 pages

Murder: best served with popcorn. That’s the mantra for the members of the Monthly Murder Movie Club at The Northwoods Movie Theater. Every month, this eclectic group of northern Michigan residents gather to watch a murder mystery movie on the big screen. After stopping the projector in the middle of the movie, the members gather to discuss the crime and suspects, each making a whodunit pick before resuming the movie. The hair dresser with the scissors? The jilted lover with poison? But nothing is normal on this Monday morning when the club members find the ticket-taking popcorn maker John E. Cash in the lobby of the theater, deader than any actor in their beloved movies. Using their unique talents and eccentricities, the Monthly Murder Movie Club members work collectively to solve the crime before the Northwoods Police force does. Members strive to protect the reputation of their beloved theater--and to protect their Monday meetings--because what each member is discovering is that there is so much more to their Monday club than a good old-fashioned murder mystery. Found family, new friends, and murder investigations!

About Marcy Blesy

Marcy Blesy is the author of over thirty books including the popular cozy mystery series: The Tucson Valley Retirement Community Cozy Mystery Series, a hilarious misadventure in amateur sleuthing. Her adult romance mystery series includes The Secret of Blue Lake and The Secret of Silver Beach, set in Michigan. The Ghost Texter Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series, featuring a sleuthing kindergarten teacher in Michigan was recently released. Children’s books include the best-selling Be the Vet series along with the following early chapter book series: Evie and the Volunteers, Niles and Bradford, Third Grade Outsider, and Hazel, the Clinic Cat.

Marcy enjoys searching for treasures along the shores of Lake Michigan. She's still waiting for the day when she finds a piece of red beach glass.

Marcy is a believer in love and enjoys nothing more than making her readers feel a book more than simply reading it.

Author Links: 

Website www.marcyblesy.com  

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550966870826  

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/marcy_blesy/  

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223057736-murder-movie-club?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=9rEZT9BRRK&rank=1  

Purchase Link - Amazon 

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Bye Bye Blackbird - A Review, Excerpt, & Giveaway

 Review

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD by Elizabeth Crowens
The Second Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery 

 

The Private Investigator office of Babs Norman is overrun with critters, big dogs, kittens, and birds! While unexpected guests have become the norm, Babs and her business partner, Guy, are unprepared when a woman falls into their office-dead. Adding to the confusion Humphrey Bogart enters with a dead bird. With low funds and an unknown dead woman Babs takes Bogart's case. As if one dead bird in a canopic jar isn't enough, bird references and more dead birds start to plague the stars filming The Maltese Falcon. Is someone trying to halt the movie's production, or is something even more sinister at play? 

In July of 1941 World War II is raging in Europe, but the United States has not joined the fighting. In the California heat Babs and Guy begin a most unusual case. People are receiving dead birds in odd ways, there are other bird references, plus more than one dead human body. As with the first book in the series a multitude of Hollywood stars inhabit the pages. In this case it's Humphrey Bogart who has the leading role. I love reading about all of the classic film stars and learning more about their personal lives. Some tidbits I knew about, Peter Lorre, some I didn't, Mary Astor, and I enjoyed seeing more of Sydney Greenstreet. The problem, though, is the large volume of characters. It's as if every star remotely involved in Hollywood had to make an appearance.

 

The mystery was puzzling and the pace consequently slow. It was also a bit bizarre with people being "birded". I certainly didn't like Detective Allgood and was surprised at Babs' dealings with him. Some of the subplots seemed unnecessary, the trip to see her mother, for example. I do like the fact that the book started in July and ended in December, a more realistic timeline for a murder mystery. I love the addition of all of the rescued animals along with the humor they bring. I really liked Chief Crow-Feather and am concerned about Babs' Japanese housemate!

 

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD highlights The Maltese Falcon in a star studded WWII era mystery combining fact and fiction in a unique tale.

 

*************************************************************************

 

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD

by Elizabeth Crowens

February 17 - March 14, 2025 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A BABS NORMAN HOLLYWOOD MYSTERY

 

In the summer of 1941, Hollywood heats up again when Humphrey Bogart arrives right after a female corpse with a dead bird stuffed inside her overcoat topples into the office of B. Norman Investigations. While filming The Maltese Falcon, Bogie found a mysterious ancient Egyptian hawk artifact on his doorstep containing a mummified black bird. Someone with dark intentions threatens the main cast, one by one, leaving dead birds, from crows to falcons, as their calling cards.

While more murders pile up, jeopardizing the film from being finished, Bogie hires private eyes Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, infuriating his volatile third wife, Mayo Methot, or Sluggy, as she’s known in some circles. Unraveling the personal lives of Mary Astor, John Huston, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook, Jr., Peter Lorre, and Jack L. Warner in their quirky, humorous way, the PIs turn the underbelly of Tinseltown upside down to stop the crazed killer from claiming another victim.

Praise for Bye Bye Blackbird:

"No author can seamlessly blend Hollywood history with and engaging mystery yarn better than Elizabeth Crowens. It’s a jaunty tale that could have been lifted from a Warner Bros. screenplay with all the principals from the studio’s famed stock company: The Maltese Falcon, Bogie, Mary Astor, Greenstreet, John Huston, and Jack L. Warner. Fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride through 1940s Hollywood!"
~ Alan K. Rode, film historian and author, Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film

"Crowens does it again with Bye Bye Blackbird. Babs, Brandt, and Bogart make this rocking novel the stuff dreams are made of."
~ Reed Farrel Coleman. New York Times bestselling author of Blind to Midnight

"It’s like someone shook a movie projector and out tumbled Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and a duo from a struggling PI agency bringing all the lighthearted fun of a 1940’s Hollywood mystery. That someone is Elizabeth Crowens."
~ Tom Straw, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

"A creative twist on The Maltese Falcon: Dead birds show up on doorsteps. Humphrey Bogart assumes the role of a real-life Sam Spade, and two young PIs rescue every oddball animal as they investigate. Even the mogul of a major movie studio is no match for a wisecracking myna bird who sounds like a Warner Brothers cartoon. If you’re a fan of Turner Classic Movies and the Golden Age of Hollywood, Bye Bye Blackbird will be sure to entertain."
~ Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Tracy Crosswhite Mystery Series

"An office full of lost pets, a strange dame drops dead in the doorway, and Bogie appears with a knock-off Egyptian hawk … while shooting The Maltese Falcon. Thus begins the wild ride of Elizabeth Crowens’ Bye Bye Blackbird. Babs and Guy, the heroes of Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles, continue in this welcome, hilarious and worthy sequel that I can only describe as The Thin Man meets ‘hardboiled’ with both tongues firmly in cheek. Famous names, Hollywood haunts, and a crime I dare you to solve, make this well worth your time. As a lover of Old Hollywood, I loved this book!"
~ Jon Lindstrom, USA Today bestselling author of Hollywood Hustle, 4-time Emmy© nominee, award-winning filmmaker, and veteran actor known for True Detective, Bosch, and General Hospital.

"Elizabeth Crowens’ Bye Bye Blackbird is a welcome addition to the Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery series. Set during the Golden Age of Hollywood and brimming with depictions of its personalities, Crowens succeeds in bringing Old Hollywood to life and offering readers another thoroughly entertaining installment to this series."
~ Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., author of the Hometowns to Hollywood series

"A delectable mystery set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Elizabeth Crowens Bye Bye Blackbird is a fantastic addition to her Babs Norman series with a treat of a cast featuring Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and other screen legends from the era brought to stunning life."
~ Lee Matthew Goldberg, award-nominated author of The Great Gimmelmans and The Mentor

Bye Bye Blackbird Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Golden Age of Hollywood Private Investigator novel with satire
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: January 28, 2025
Number of Pages: 340
Series: Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery, Book 2 | Each is a Stand-Alone Mystery
Book Links: Amazon | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1

Look at the Birdie!

Hollywood 1941

On Friday, July 4th, only the most essential, dedicated, or insane Los Angelenos punched the clock. Established businesses that usually stayed open closed early that afternoon. For the fledgling ones, like the young private detectives at B. Norman Investigations, there would be no weenie roasts, barbeques, or national holiday celebrations. Death would soon follow. Every electric fan they owned hummed its own tune. Between the fan blades whirring and the cats purring, panting dogs, who could qualify as hotdogs, an injured pelican with its wing in a sling, and their janitor’s wisecracking myna bird, the whole kit and caboodle at Hollywood Boulevard and N. Sycamore resembled a cross between the Humane Society and the Griffith Park Zoo.

Guy Brandt, more detective-partner than secretary, manned the desk upfront. On top of it: a shoebox of magazine clippings, scissors, and a stack of The Times and Herald-Examiner. He undid one more button on his clammy, sweat-stained shirt, flung his tie onto their hat rack, and took a swig of his warm Nehi orange soda, already flat. He hoped to find new clients from newspaper leads but wasn’t getting anywhere. Babs Norman, who always had every pin curl in place, patted off her sticky forehead with a handkerchief. Way beyond a simple touch-up with powder and fresh lipstick, only a masterful makeup wizard, like Perc Westmore, could bring new life to this wilted flower.

“Wouldn’t it be fine and dandy if we could afford to run an ad at least once a week saying that we’re private detectives, specializing in discreet celebrity cases?” she asked.

An adventurous kitten, who strayed from the pack, latched on to Guy’s sock and started to climb his leg. “Maybe we should ask if we can put a note in the downstairs lobby that we’re also a pet adoption service.” He unhooked its claws, returning him to his mama.

“You think that would pay off our debts?”

“Do you always have to sound like a broken record?” An Irish Wolfhound, in need of a bath, sauntered in from the doorway between the two offices. He went up to Guy and plopped his oversized, hairy head into his lap. “Dog days not agreeing with you, Sir Henry?” After rubbing the furry beast’s head, he went to their icebox and plopped chunks of ice in the various water bowls scattered around both rooms. Several prostrated cats laid on their backs, trying to find coolness on the linoleum floor.

From under his pile of clippings, he fished out a copy of Black Mask. Babs, with a wooden clothespin clamping her nostrils shut and carrying an odiferous box of shredded newspapers, walked into his office and stopped short when she caught him reading the pulp. “You think we’re going to find our next client from detective fiction? We need another high-profile case like when we rescued Asta, so MGM could go into production on their next Thin Man film. They paid us an unheard-of amount of money…until you lost it all.”

“Stop being such a sourpuss.” He refused to give her eye contact.

“Do you think I’m enjoying spending time in our stifling office? I’d rather be at the beach with the man of my dreams.” Her inflection had a hint of sarcasm.

“Who’s the lucky fella?”

She went over to their monstrous dog and kissed him on the nose. “Looks like it’s you, Sir Henry of the Baskervilles. Instead of my frog prince, you’re my dog prince. Ah, you’re such a good boy.” She stared at the bulldog in the corner. “But we really need to paper-train Bruno.”

Their adopted bulldog whined. “You hurt his feelings,” Guy said. “Give him a good scratch behind his ears and apologize.”

She scowled. “I’ll give him two more weeks, and it’ll be your job to train him. Otherwise, he can go back to Wiggins, and I don’t care if one of his kids breaks out in hives.” She headed out the door to dump the litter.

* * *

“Our phone rang twice while you were out,” Guy said. “But Wiggins’ stupid bird answered before I could.”

“Hello, sucker!” the myna bird cackled. “Down for the count…1…2…3. Knocked him in the kisser, didn’t ya?”

“By the time I picked up the receiver, whoever it was hung up,” he explained.

“It’s hard to believe a bird can be so smart,” Babs muttered.

“Smart-mouthed is more like it,” he said. “Sounds like Jimmy Cagney, who he’s named after. Maybe we should let him earn his keep. The bird can impersonate him at parties.”

Babs stared at the troublemaker. “The person on the other end probably thought it was a prank.” She looked around the room. “Keep it up and…I got a lot of hungry cats and canines who wouldn’t mind a bowlful of myna bird stew.”

Wiggins, the building janitor, propped their front door open, causing their ginger tomcat to disappear into the hallway faster than gunfire. “My wife said the same. What are the two of ya doing here on Independence Day? With the tenants gone, I heard yer bickering all the way in the basement. Sounded like a married couple in divorce court. How did ya get in?”

“We had an extra set of keys,” Guy said.

Wiggins planted his hands on his hips. “More like makin’ a copy of my set while my back was turned. There’s no foolin’ me. Come on now. Who’ll be the first to confess?”

Both detectives buried their noses in their newspapers.

“All right, if none of ya willin’ to come clean, why aren’t you out having fun?”

“Paying our overdue office rent is my idea of fun,” Babs replied.

Wiggins looked confused. Guy explained, “We’re hurting. Nothing but small potatoes since retrieving our dognapped canine stars.”

“We might be forced to move out, if we don’t land a decent case,” said Babs. “I’m not looking forward to setting up shop at my house.”

Wiggins inhaled but choked. “You make sure you keep this place spic-and-span. If your neighbors start belly achin’…”

From inside his desk, Guy took out a sardine from its wax paper wrapping and tossed it to their pelican.

“Sniff…sniff… If you don’t get rid of this stench,” Wiggins continued, “my boss’ll make sure he throws you out on your arse.”

She plucked a bottle of cheap toilet water from her purse and spritzed the room. “Better now?”

Wiggins pointed toward the exit. “Goin’ after that mouser. Left the back door open to the alley downstairs. He’s liable to slip out and get lost forever.”

Babs handed her partner a feather duster. “Do something.” Then she returned to her lair with a stack of discarded tabloids to make fresh litter and to do her own skewed interpretation of housekeeping.

Guy reset their wall clock, which was a few hours behind the last time they had a power outage, and gave the reception area the minimal once-over by removing accumulated grime from the top of file cabinets. He was just about to straighten the frame displaying his private investigator’s license, when out of the side of his eye, he noticed a shadow. A large, irregular object leaned against the pebbled glass window of their front door. At first he paid it no mind and continued his cleanup crusade.

When minutes passed and it hadn’t budged, he called out just above a whisper, “Do you mind coming over? Make it quick, but be quiet.”

A startled canary flew out their open transom as Babs breezed toward the front. Guy pointed to the silhouetted figure. “I tidied up, like you asked, but don’t recall hearing anyone approach. This thing…it appeared out of nowhere and hasn’t moved since.”

Babs called out to see if it was Wiggins, but whomever it was didn’t respond. She inquired again. “The door is open. Come on in. We’re too hot and tired for practical jokes.”

With a nod, she gave Guy the go-ahead to open the door, but when he did, a young woman they’d never seen before, wearing a hat and an oversized coat despite the heatwave, fell face-forward onto the floor.

“The casting office is on the fourth floor,” Babs said, until she realized the lady hadn’t moved or said a word. Horrified, she squealed and froze in place.

Guy, also shaking, reached for the phone and called Wiggins’ downstairs office. His voice broke up. “Come up—pronto!”

As soon as he put down the receiver, she demanded he call the cops. Without thinking, she leapt up on a wooden chair as if she’d seen a mouse. Her legs wobbled, and she continued to holler.

Wiggins returned, heaving as if he had skipped waiting for the elevator and sprinted up the stairs. He had the missing tomcat draped over his shoulders. “Heard screams echoing down the hallway. You better keep better tabs on your tabbies. What the blarney did ya think was so important—Holy moly! Mary, Mother of God!”

Guy poked the stranger with his feather duster. Not having any luck, Wiggins, who was bigger than the two detectives combined, got a firm toehold with his work boots and rolled her onto her back. All three stared at the stiff.

“Oh, she’s dead alright,” Wiggins assured them. “Ever seen her before?”

Both PIs shook their heads. Guy tiptoed around the corpse and closed the front door. Wiggins fended off their curious menagerie.

“Something dark and…fea-ther-y is protruding from her coat. Like she was trying to conceal whatever she was carrying.” Babs wrinkled her nose. “Smells like she or someone else doused her with…men’s cologne. Not flowery enough to be one a lady would wear. Wiggins, how do you think she got in?”

“Through the back-alley door, I suppose, ’cause I locked the front. Could’ve snuck in and been here a while. Maybe passed out in a stairwell while my back was turned and crawled up to your floor before she expired.”

Guy paced the room and checked the clock. “The cops seem to be taking their time.” He pulled a flask from his file cabinet and took a swig. He offered some to Babs, but she declined.

Wiggins wrested the flask out of Guy’s hand and finished it to the last drop. “Sure as hell, this would have to happen on a holiday when the police are short-staffed.” He took a swatter from off the wall and clobbered a pesky fly that landed on the stranger’s ear. Babs trembled.

“She can feel it no more than if you were all doped up at the dentist,” Wiggins said.

Babs commented that the police could examine the body. She wasn’t touching it.

Guy suggested to Wiggins to wait for the cops downstairs. “They’ll need you to unlock the building.”

Keeping his distance, Guy asked, “Babs, how do you think she died?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” She made it clear she wasn’t even interested in slipping on gloves to search for an ID.

He suggested that this could be the lead they’ve been looking for. She didn’t see it that way. “This is no way to spend a holiday. Let the police and the medical examiner do their jobs. They’ve expressed they don’t want us meddling in their homicide cases, anyway. I just want her out of here.”

Soon, they heard footsteps and the sound of crunching paper. She took for granted the cops had arrived. “Come in. It’s unlocked.”

She and her partner didn’t make a move until the front door creaked open.

Instead of the police, Humphrey Bogart stood there holding a parcel haphazardly wrapped in brown paper and twine. “I called twice. Assumed you had an answering service to leave a message. Dialed the right number, but someone with a peculiar voice like a Warner Brothers cartoon picked up. When I tried to explain my predicament, he mocked me and cracked a few jokes. Figured I better stop over.”

“How did you get into our building?” Guy asked.

“Your janitor recognized me. When I asked to see you, he figured I was harmless. He said he was waiting for—” Babs interrupted his train of thought. Still standing on the chair, she covered her eyes with one hand and pointed to the floor without making a sound. Bogie backed up. The blood drained from his face. “Whoa! Guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he was expecting the cops.”

A black cat jumped on top of the victim and started making biscuits. “Oh, no, you don’t.” Guy bent down to throw him off.

“Wh-a-a-t happened?” Bogie’s words came out choppy.

Babs regained her voice, which, at first, came out in squeaks. “Not sure. What brings you here?”

“I’m looking for a private investigator. You came highly recommended as some of the best private dicks in town.”

Babs flushed. She preferred a more ladylike elucidation. With no further introductions needed, she ushered Bogart into her office, and Guy followed, grabbing a notepad off his desk. Even though she hated staring at the corpse, she kept her door open to keep an eye out for the police. She kept reminding herself to take deep breaths and not to panic.

“Do you mind clearing your desk?” Bogie held out his parcel. “I’d like to show you what I found on my doorstep this morning.”

With one fell swoop of her arm, the papers went into a spare box, which Babs said she’d sort through later. Bogart put his parcel down on her desk and fanned out his jacket.

“I guess we can skip formalities when the weather beats us into submission. Mind if I take this off?” His shirt was soaked. “This has been one of those days where I’ve felt like an omelet slapped on the Devil’s griddle.”

Babs identified his mysterious object as a museum replica of an ancient Egyptian canopic jar of Horus, the Hawk, the offspring of Isis and Osiris.

“This is much smaller and lighter than the falcon prop in our movie. Ours is about forty-seven pounds of lead. If you dropped it, you could break someone’s toe.” Bogie lifted its lid and revealed a mummified object. Taking special care, he unwrapped its gauze, stained but far from looking ancient, to reveal a sizable dead crow.

“I have no idea what this is supposed to symbolize, but now it looks like I’ve got competition from what’s in your front room as to which gives me the worst case of the heebie-jeebies,” Bogie remarked.

Guy pulled the privacy shades down on the pebbled glass windows on the walls and door separating the front office from her inner sanctum. “One would presume to find a dead falcon, not a raven, considering you’re in the middle of production for The Maltese Falcon.”

* * *

Excerpt from Bye Bye Blackbird by Elizabeth Crowens. Copyright 2025 by Elizabeth Crowens. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Crowens. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Elizabeth Crowens is bi-coastal between Los Angeles and New York. For over thirty years, she has worn many hats in the entertainment industry, contributed stories to Black Belt, Black Gate, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazines, Hell’s Heart, and the Bram Stoker-nominated A New York State of Fright, and has a popular Caption Contest on Facebook.

Awards include: Leo B. Burstein Scholarship from the MWA-NY Chapter, New York Foundation of the Arts grant to publish the anthology New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst (no longer in print), Eric Hoffer Award, Glimmer Train Awards Honorable Mention, Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist, two Grand prize, six First prize, and multiple Finalist Chanticleer Awards. Crowens writes multi-genre alternate history and historical Hollywood mysteries.

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