The Humphrey Bogart Murder Case [Hardcover]

George Baxt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

In 1941, as Humphrey Bogart prepares to start filming The Maltese Falcon, a bizarre cast of characters descends upon him, hoping to retrieve a treasure map that Bogie allegedly inherited from his sea captain father-in-law.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Baxt has featured such celebrities as Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, and Marlene Dietrich in his series of Hollywood murder novels, so it's only appropriate that he finally got around to everybody's favorite tough guy, Humphrey Bogart. When his mother-in-law's house is ransacked and his housekeeper is murdered, Bogart gets involved in a dangerous search for a missing cornucopia filled with priceless gems; any resemblance to the plot of The Maltese Falcon is purely intentional. Along the way, we meet such Bogart friends and coworkers as Dashiell Hammett, Sidney Greenstreet, and Mary Astor. Every celebrity turns out to be just what you'd expect: Bogart is a stand-up, stalwart good guy; Sam Goldwyn mangles his English; and Theda Bara, long past her movie career, is downright weird. Baxt fills his novel with nonstop anachronisms: no one collected comic books or baseball cards in 1940; food rationing didn't begin until after the U.S. entered World War II; T-shirts with slogans are a more recent plague. Still, despite the gaffes, the tale offers light entertainment for fans of movies or mysteries. George Needham

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312118287
• ISBN-13: 978-0312118280
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,784,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Too Bad a Story, February 22, 2004

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Humphrey Bogart Murder Case (Hardcover)

Although there were some glaring errors in this book, I didn't find it that bad a story. Bogie comes across pretty realistic, and the sneak peaks that we get at big names is always fun in these books. This book's time frame is supposed to take place around the time that Bogart was filming the Maltese Falcon, and the story runs a parallel storyline to that great Dashiell Hammett story, only in this case they're looking for a missing cornucopia filled with priceless jewels. The stakes are high and before the missing artifact is found, three bodies are found. One of the killed was Bogie's and his wife Mayo's housekeeper so Bogie feels he must get involved in order to solve the mystery of who killed her in his house.