Renting Silence
A Roaring Twenties Mystery #3
Mary Miley
Severn House, December 2016
ISBN 978-0-7278-8653-8
Hardcover

Jessie Beckett isn’t really a private investigator but she seems to have a knack for it so, when Mary Pickford asks her to look into a starlet’s death, she agrees, having no idea where her search for the truth will take her. Vaudeville’s colorful past, blackmail, an impending death sentence…all come into play but will these varying pieces lead Jessie to Lila Walker’s real murderer before Ruby Glynn hangs?

The mystery here is topnotch but it’s Ms. Miley‘s evocation of Hollywood in its early days that’s really the star of the show, pun intended. Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Myrna Loy, Zeppo Marx, even Rin Tin Tin fill the pages with so much history and fun it’s easy to become mesmerized. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode in Jessie’s life and will be staring the next book, Murder in Disguise, as soon as I can.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, January 2018.

Mary Miley captures 1920s Hollywood in a way that keeps readers page a'turning. Her mix of mystery and real, over the top characters (Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, to name the most prominent) combine to provide a fascinating look behind the scenes of a just awakening Tinseltown. With a heroine who uses her vaudeville background to great effect, a mix of coppers and bad guys, and last but not least, a good friend who just happens to be Myrna Loy, you will be entertained from beginning to end.

Renting Silence by Mary Maley is part of an ongoing mystery series set during Hollywood silent era. This is the first novel I read in the series (though it’s actually the third in the chronology) and I have to admit, I have contrasting feelings about it.

I really liked the setting, especially when it came to the central part, all set in the vaudeville world. It’s pretty obvious that the author made lots of the research and she depicts a vivid world, where real people live real situations.
Instead I’m not sure how I feel about the author using so many real life people in the story, all related in some way to the main character. Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Bob Hope, Myrna Loy and others, all find place in the life of this one character. I’m not particularly keen on the fictional use of real historical people in general, and when they crowd like this…
I’m also particularly wary about some social attitudes: in some instances, these characters sounded and acted too modern for the time period (in my opinion).

The mystery is very good. I think it was clever, one of the best I’ve read lately. That really sounded grounded in the time and place and I liked this. I’m less fond of the way the investigation was conducted. There are places where the getting of information is a bit forced – others when it’s so natural you barely realised you’re given a clue (I love this!). But what really bothered me was the way things which are completely disconnected with the mystery get in the way on occasions, particularly the very long closing episode where, just before the reveal of the mystery, you get several chapters of a train robbery which has zero connection to the main plot.

All in all, I liked the book. It’s easy to read, the characters are easy to love, the mystery is clever. Not an unconditional love, but sure a lot of enjoyment.

Miley’s third Roaring ´20s mystery delivers more zippy entertainment that taps into the spirit of the time when Hollywood’s silent film stars had audiences swooning and vaudeville acts traversed the country via rail. Fresh from her previous investigation, Jessie Beckett, assistant script girl at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, gets asked to solve another Hollywood murder. It seems an open-and-shut case: in her dying moments, Lila Walker had pointed twice to her friend, actress Ruby Glynn, who was found clutching a bloody knife.

However, Ruby insists on her innocence. A studio cameraman who sat on the jury that condemned her to death regrets his vote. Observing his tormented conscience, Mary Pickford asks Jessie to look further into Ruby’s situation, because the police won’t. Jessie can’t refuse her longtime idol, so she gathers her street-smarts and ingenuity and delves into Lila’s background. What she uncovers sends her back to her old haunts, on the vaudeville circuit across the Midwest, where she meets a variety of talented performers, shadows from her own family’s past, and hateful prejudice in the form of the KKK. Jessie also worries that her lover, David Carr, has returned to his old bootlegging habits.

Renting Silence makes good use of historical characters, from Miss Pickford and her debonair husband to the young Leslie Hope, a former amateur boxer turned song-and-dance man who debates changing his name to something more American-sounding, like Bill or Bob. Jessie’s travels bring to life the fascinating, vanished world of vaudeville, and it’s a lot of fun, but the investigation driving Jessie is quite serious and dangerous. The title refers to blackmail; as one person tells Jessie, “But you don’t buy silence. You only rent it. And the rent kept going up.” The novel makes plain how much people stand to lose if they don’t fit society’s norms.

An interesting look at Hollywood.

Jessie Beckett works for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. When a young girl, Ruby Glynn is found guilty of murdering Lila Walker, Jessie is asked by both Ruby’s lawyer and her distraught boyfriend to search for the real killer and hopefully find them before Ruby is due to be hanged. Both Fairbanks and Mary Pickford give her their full support to go off in search of the perpetrator.

I enjoyed this interesting and unusual storyline and the way that Jessie sets about proving Ruby’s innocence. Discovering the real killer was especially rewarding, leaving the question “Who would of thought it would turn out like this?”

Mary Miley does a lot of research for her each of her novels, thus being able to ensure that an authentic picture of the period she is describing before is real and very accurate.

Treebeard

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.