This image is the cover for the book Black Is the Fashion for Dying

Black Is the Fashion for Dying

In Hollywood, a screenwriter gets involved in an impossible murder

In a steamy tropical jungle, a sinister American woman pushes the natives too far and gets exactly what she deserves: a rusty knife buried deep in her back. At least, that is the way the movie is supposed to end. But when the loathsome starlet Caresse Garnet learns her character is about to be killed off, she refuses to die, forcing the studio to rewrite the ending the night before the scenes are to be shot.

While hammering out a happy ending for Hollywood’s most reviled actress, screenwriter Richard Blake discovers a naked blonde in his driveway, sitting in a parked car and sucking down exhaust. She is the first clue in an unfathomable Hollywood mystery that will teach Caresse Garnet that though she may get to dictate when her characters die, in real life, it is not up to her.

Jonathan Latimer

Jonathan Latimer (1906–1983) was a bestselling author and screenwriter. Born in Chicago, he began his career as a crime reporter for the Herald Examiner, working there until 1935, when he set out on a twisting road to Hollywood, which included stints as a dude rancher, a stunt man, and a publicist. In the late 1930s he began writing screenplays for MGM, producing the scripts for several classic noir films, including The Big Clock (1948) and the adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key (1942), which starred Alan Ladd.

All the while, Latimer was writing fast-paced mystery novels such as The Lady in the Morgue (1936) and The Dead Don’t Care (1938). After fighting in World War II, he returned to Hollywood, where he continued writing novels and became a staff writer for the Perry Mason show. 

Open Road Integrated Media